Exploits of a Food Nut

Chicken Tikka - A Random Recipe

2012-01-23T21:17:00.000Z

This months random recipe challenge from Dom at Belleau Kitchen was to use a cookbook that we had been given for Christmas. I received a couple of excellent books for Christmas including Masterchef at Home and the River Cottage Meat and Fish books.

I opted for the Meat book, a truly excellent meaty tome covering every type of meat in great detail and well worth adding to your collection. I flicked through but for once I stopped near the back instead of somewhere randomly in the middle. At the back of this book are a variety of mini recipes for meat marinades, accompaniments, trimmings etc..

I randomly landed on a page and immediately the recipe for a Tikka Marinade sprang out at me. The recipe was purely for the marinade and didn't given any recommendations for which cut of meat. So in honour of our fearless random recipe leader, I opted for Chicken Thighs, although I imagine it would be rather good on other cuts.

Chicken Tikka
Ingredients
6 chicken thighs
1 tsp Salt
3 Tbsp Natural Yoghurt
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp garam masala
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground fenugreek
golf ball sized bit of fresh ginger (grated)
4 large garlic cloves, peeled and squished
1-2 tbsp sunflower oil
2-4 chillies, depending on size and heat, finely chopped

Method
Mix all ingredients into a large bowl
Slash the chicken thighs
Add to the bowl and mix around with the marinade until well covered.

Leave for a few hours or overnight

Now in an ideal world I would have a Tandoor in the middle of my kitchen for such moments like this, however an oven at 200C for about 20 minutes will do fine, or use a barbecue if it's in the summer time and the weather is high and you can chase right up and touch the sky....ahem....I'll stop now.

Remove from the oven, drizzle a little lemon juice over them and serve however you like.

Verdict
Good God, I must have picked some nuclear strength chillies in making this. Beside the searing heat, these are so so good, tender juicy chicken, delicious blend of spices and I will definitely be making these again. next time I'll tone down the chili and marinade overnight. Now if you will excuse me, I need to find milk.

Enjoy

Slow Roasted Pork Belly with a Chorizo Ragu

2012-01-07T20:24:00.001Z

As part of making my own bacon, I had to trim down the bellies to make them fit, this left me with a nice chunk of pork belly to do something with (it's a hard life ain't it).
So I decided to cook it very slowly using a few things in my fridge and cupboards including (wahey) cooking chorizo.

As I live alone I cooked this for one but it can be easily scaled up to suit various numbers

Slow Roasted Pork belly with a Chorizo Ragu
Ingredients
1 decent sized piece of pork belly
50g cooking chorizo, cut into small pieces
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, sliced into small pieces
1 leek, thinly sliced
half a tin of tomatoes
Ground black pepper and salt

Method
Score the skin of the belly and season with salt and pepper, set aside.
Fry the onion and chorizo for a minute or two
Add the rest of the veg and fry for 5 minutes or so to slightly soften
Mix in the tomatoes.
Pour into a casserole dish and lay the bellies on top.

Cover with foil and roast in a preheated oven 180-200C for an hour n half.
Remove from the oven and serve with some spuds if you like.

Enjoy

Bacon, In the Beginning

2012-01-05T20:30:00.001Z

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the sky and the seas and man and beast. In his infinite wisdom he gave man the skill and the creativity to turn a small part of one of those beasts into something something surely sent by the angels themselves.

Right that's enough of religion lets get to the good stuff.

Bacon, surely one of the pig's greatest gifts, whether thrown into a sandwich as part of one of humanities great weapons in fending off the impending doom of last nights excesses or slipped into holy matrimony with the egg maybe with Italian pecorino and pasta to create a superb Carbonara or the ultimate wake up call of a Full English Breakfast.

However our porcine friends don't give up this fine specimen of food easily. It takes time and patience to create and cure pig into bacon and that's what I'm currently attempting to do thanks to the River Cottage Meat Book I received for Christmas...

Here's what I've done so far

Dry Cure Mix
Ingredients
400g soft brown sugar
about 750g course salt
20 juniper berries, lightly crushed
25g course ground pepper
few bay leaves, finely chopped

Method
Mix all the ingredients together and set aside in a non metallic container.

The recipe in the book states to use a whole pork belly, about a metre in length divided into 3 even pieces of about 30 cm or 3 fat belly pieces of a kilo each.

I went to the butcher (DO NOT BUY FROM A SUPERMARKET) and asked for a kilo of pork belly because I don't have the room to cure 3 kilos of pork. The kilo piece I got was huge however and it had the rib bones in which I didn't realise until the next day.

I nearly took it back to the butcher and asked him to take them out for me but as I'm all about trying new things, I thought I could cope with a bit of amateur butchery... it didn't turn out bad in the end and now I have lots of pork ribs to marinade and roast, result!

Now you have got your pork and cure ready, stick the pork on a board and take a good handful of the cure.
Rub gently all over the belly until lightly evenly salted.

Place in non metallic container, stack them if you have more than one piece and cover and leave for 24 hours in a cool place.

After 24 hours, drain off the water that has leeched off and rub another handful or so of cure into the bellies, alternate the bellies between top and bottom each time.

I plan to repeat the last stage every day for the next 5-6 days, I'll let you know how it turns out.

To be continued.....

Saffron Peach Cake

2011-12-12T21:16:00.006Z

I appear to have found the baking bug, I blame Dan Lepard, every time I flick through his book I find something else to have a go at making. This one from the cake section leapt out at me last night and scanning through the ingredients I had nearly everything already in my cupboard...apart from saffron....jeez you need a bank loan to buy any of this stuff, £3.50 for half a gram! but no matter it's not as if buying it is a regular occurrence.

I am submitting this for Karen and Kate's Tea Time Treats challenge (Christmas theme, chosen by Kate) because it's a little different than the usual cakes at this time of year plus it's got icing sugar sprinkled on it so it looks like snow.....*clutches straw*

Recipe available here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/21/baking-peach-cake

Verdict
Soft, nutty, sweet, juicy.....oh just make it already it's blooming lovely.

Espresso and Brazil Nut Cake

2011-12-06T21:27:00.000Z

Like nearly every food blogger, amateur baker, cake lover and general worshipper of sweet stuff, recently I received a copy of Dan Lepard's Short & Sweet. I currently have yet to find a bad review of this book and after finally getting round to making something from it, I cant imagine I will be the first. I've had this book a couple of weeks now and being chopping and changing with what I was going to bake first. After narrowing it down to the cake section, this one jumped out at me.

There is lot of debate about whether to put recipes from books on blogs nowadays and with this book being fairly recently published I decided not to publish the recipe for this cake. However after a quick Google search I found the recipe here on the Guardian Website but I highly recommend you buy this book.

Verdict
Great choice I think for the first recipe, easy to make and with lovely flavours and texture. The coffee in the cake is subtle apart from the odd strong wave from the icing and the brazil nuts provide a superb texture to the cake crumb. My cake tins are a little bigger than the recommended, therefore mine is a little thinner than it should be, still tastes good though.

Buffalo and Beetroot Stew

2011-11-24T18:39:00.000Z

I'm quite a fan of this time of year, gone are the light dishes and salads of summer and in come thick hearty stews and warming soups. The inspiration for this stew came from two separate markets, the spectacular Borough market of London town and the little deli market that crops up monthly in the stunning surroundings of Kirkstall Abbey of Leeds.

While having a wander around Kirkstall Deli, one of the stalls I visited was Snowden Hill Water Buffalo, which as the name suggests sells buffalo in various cuts and forms. Having never cooked with buffalo before I picked up a packet of shin meat for a bargain price of £2.50, planning to make some variety of stew with it. A week or so later while wandering around Borough Market, one of the veg stalls were selling bunches of beetroot for £1.50, so as with the buffalo I picked some up to have a go cooking with it.

With stews I generally follow a simple formula:

Meat + Veg + Alcohol + Long cooking time = a damn good stew.

This time, for the alcohol, I decided to continue with the Red theme and opted for a bottle of Merlot.

Buffalo and Beetroot Stew
Ingredients
500g Shin buffalo, diced and coated with 1 tbsp of flour (substitute with beef if you you cant get hold of any buffalo)
1 tbsp oil
1 Large onion, diced
2 Carrot, roughly chopped
2 Parsnips, roughly chopped
2 bulbs of beetroot, peeled and diced
1 400g tin of tomatoes
500ml Merlot or alternative red wine
Plenty of Thyme/Rosemary
Salt and Ground Black Pepper

Method
Fry the onions for a few minutes in the oil until golden brown.

Several recipe books that I've read state that browning the meat is not necessary, but if you prefer then add it now and cook for a few minutes until browned.

Add the remainder of the dry veg and cook for 5 minutes until softened slightly.

If you didn't brown the meat add it now.

Pour in the wine and tinned tomatoes.
Season well and add lots of your choice of herbage.
Bring to the boil
Now you have a choice either stick a lid on and simmer on a gentle heat for 2-3 hours or transfer to a oven proof dish, cover with foil and place into a preheated oven at 160C for the same length of time.

Check occasionally and add a bit of water if its looking to dry.

Sit back with the remainder of the wine.

Remove from the oven and serve with fluffy mash or a jacket spud.

Verdict
Absolutely fantastic, everything a autumn/winter stew should be and with a stunning deep red colour.

If you have leftovers, leave them in the fridge for 3 days, the flavour intensifies and it gets even better, after that then freeze it.

Considering the buffalo was the shin cut and had to be stewed, It hard to give an opinion on the flavour specifically. The texture is slightly different however, slightly softer and leaner. I will have to get a steak cut next time and try it properly.

Enjoy

Ginger and Cinnamon Doughnuts

2011-11-12T15:59:00.001Z

A new blogger challenge that has started this month is Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked. the inaugural theme this month is Ginger and bonfire treats. So I thought I would enter.

Having just started a new job, I am still getting used to the place and finding random pieces of equipment in the kitchen, one of these things was a mini doughnut maker. Having never made doughnuts before and didn't fancy messing about with 200 degree oil and burning the place down, I borrowed it for the weekend.
To fit the theme, I adapted the basic doughnut recipe from the instruction book in order to make these lovely things:

Ginger and Cinnamon Doughnuts
Ingredients
175g Self Raising Flour
2 tsp Baking powder
125g Caster Sugar
1tsp Ground Ginger
1tsp Ground Cinnamon
50g Glace ginger
1 Large egg
135ml Milk
50g Melted butter.

Method
Preheat the doughnut maker for 5 minutes
Mix the dry ingredients including the glace ginger together in a large bowl.
Make a well in the centre and add the liquid ingredients together, beat together until smooth.
Add a teaspoon of the mixture into each section and close the lid, leave for around 3 minutes until golden brown. Repeat until mixture is used up.

Chocolate dip
Melt the chocolate either in the microwave of over a pan of simmering water.
once melted remove from the heat and stir in the cream until combined.

Serve

Verdict
Very tasty but then how can doughnuts with chocolate not be? especially with the excellent partners of ginger and cinnamon.

Spiced Citrus Bean Soup - A Random Recipe

2011-11-09T21:18:00.000Z

This months random recipe challenge was a little easier than last months global challenge, which involved me hiding under a duvet until the images of the dreaded ingredient went away. This month was a collaboration between Dom from Belleau Kitchen and Jac from Tinned Tomatoes who have teamed up to do a joint soup challenge.
After scouring my recipe books I appeared to be a bit thin on the ground with soup recipes, so I thought I would attempt it another way. I went to BBC Good Food and typed in soup. I then went to a random number generator and received the random number: 78. So off I went to scour the listings, hoping for a proper winter warmer, a quality soup that would be right up my street, maybe a nice minestroney style soup.....but no. Result number 78 was Spiced Citrus Bean Soup...*sighs*...ah well it might be nice.

Spiced Citrus Bean Soup
Ingredients
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, sliced
450g Carrots, roughly chopped
1 tbsp garam masala
finger length of fresh root ginger, grated
juice of one orange
1L vegetable stock
200ml can reduced fat coconut milk
410g mixed beans, drained, rinsed
2 tbsp coriander, chopped

Method
Heat the oil in a large saucepan.
Gently cook the onions and carrots for 15 minutes until soft and golden.
Add the garam masala and ginger, cook for a further minute.
Add the juice and stock then bring to the boil.
Simmer for ten minutes until the carrots are tender then stir in the coconut milk.
Puree until smooth then stir in the beans.
Add the coriander and serve.

Verdict
Never again shall I judge a book by it's cover...or a soup by its name in this case. Turns out it was blooming lovely. Nice mix and balance of flavours brought together by creaminess of the coconut and perfect for this time of year. The recipe states to use reduced fat coconut milk but the normal stuff works just as well. I'll definitely be making this again.

Fig Custard Tart

2011-11-08T22:12:00.001Z

Last weekend I went to borough Market in London. For those of you that are unacquainted with this market basically it's heaven on earth for a food lover. Honestly I wandered around in a slight daze for the first hour, before slightly coming round to enjoy a cup of fine coffee and fresh oysters for breakfast while deciding what I wanted to buy from this wonderful place. One of the stalls had a pyramid of fresh fat figs for a reasonable price of 5 for £2. Most of what I bought got eaten as they were but I saved a few to add to this tart...yes its another tart, honestly I'll cook something different eventually....maybe...erm...

Anyway, custard tart. One of my all time favourites, I've been eating this since time began. Once for a birthday instead of a cake I requested a custard tart a lemon meringue pie and a batch of mince pies (my birthday is in May) so I thought I would make one with the addition of figs to see how it would work together.

Ingredients
Pastry
210g Plain flour
35g icing sugar
125g cold butter, cubed
1 egg yolk
2 tsp of water
1 egg white (to brush the cooked case)

Filling
70g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs
150ml cream
150ml whole milk
Vanilla pod and seeds or use 1 tsp extract
As many figs as you like, halved and trimmed to just below the pastry line.
Nutmeg

Method
Pastry
Mix the flour and sugar together, add the butter.
Rub the butter into the flour gently between your fingertips until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Add the yolk and water and mix together.
Using you hands bring together the mix into a dough ball, don't overwork.
Wrap tightly in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30mins to an hour.

Get two sheets of cling film, spread one across the work surface, place the dough in the middle and spread the other sheet over the top.
Roll out gently in between the two sheets of cling film (this method stops any excess flour being added to the pastry and drying it out).
Remove the top layer and using the bottom layer drape the pastry into a 26cm fluted tart tin.
Press gently into the tart tin and using a rolling pin roll across the top to trim off the edges.
Push the edges up a couple of millimetres to compensate for shrinkage.

Gently press a layer of foil into the tin and fill with baking beans.
Bake in a preheated oven (180C, fan) for 15 minutes.
Remove the foil and beans and bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown
Remove from oven and brush with egg white to create a waterproof layer.
Turn the oven down to 130C (fan)

Filling
Prepare the figs, trim off the tips and slice in half and trim until it's just below the pastry line. Arrange in the pastry case as you like.
Whisk the sugar with the eggs
Bring to the boil the cream, milk and vanilla in a saucepan.
Add to the eggs whilst whisking constantly.
Sieve into a jug

Pour into the pastry case around the figs and grate over some nutmeg.
Place very carefully into the oven and bake for around 40 minutes until the filling gives only a slight tremor when shook.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Serve

Verdict
Very nice. Lovely crisp pastry with soft sweet custard complemented with juicy baked fig, can't go wrong.

Enjoy

Scallop (and Squid) with Fennel and Rocket - a Random Recipe

2011-10-29T22:06:00.001+01:00

Squid....why did it have to be squid. of all the ingredients on this earth (and sea) it had to be squid.

This months random recipe challenge at Belleau Kitchen was a stroke of ~~genius~~ evil. Instead of being trusted to pick our own random recipe, this month someone else had to pick it, namely another food blogger. Seriously how am i meant to chea...take part honestly with all this suspicion floating around. I can just imagine our host sitting there watching us all whilst stroking a white cat and sniggering evily.

So then on with the challenge, I was paired with Lucy at the Kitchen-maid blog, 12,000 miles away in New Zealand, after a few tweets I ended up with James Martin's My Kitchen recipe book and then ended up with his scallop and squid salad.

Now its quite appropriate that this was a James Martin recipe because this dish encompasses my heaven and hell foods and if you watch Saturday Kitchen you will know what I mean. But I was commited to braving it and getting on with recipe....then i went to the fishmonger.....

...and there it was glistening, slippery and slimy with its gelatinous eye staring at me from its icy pit, tentacles waiting to strangle me to death if I even attempted to buy it...so I bought some scallops and legged it.

Fine I'm a wuss but I couldnt ruin some quality scallops with squid and it tasted very nice without it.

Scallops, Fennel and Rocket salad
Ingredients

2 small fennel bulbs
8 large scallops
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
75g rocket

Dressing
20g dill, chopped
15g parsley, chopped
15g coriander, chopped
zest and juice of 2 limes
1 chili, deseeded and chopped
1 tbsp allspice
75ml extra virgin olive oil

Method
Slice off the root and thinly slice the fennel bulbs, place into a large bowl.
Prepare and mix the dressing ingredients together and set aside.

Scallops
The book is a bit vague on how to cook scallops properly, this is the best way I've read on how to cook them:

Heat a pan to a very high temperature
Drizzle the scallops with oil and season, make sure they are well coated and then place the scallops in the pan one at a time in a circle around the side of pan, start a timer when the first one goes in.
Once one and a half minutes passes, turn over the first one you placed in the pan and then turn over each scallop in the same order they went in.
Once another minute and a half passes then remove the first one you put in and so on... this should ensure they are all cooked evenly and for the same length of time and should help you keep track.

Add the scallops to the fennel along with the rocket and dressing
Toss together to make sure all are well coated.

Serve and enjoy

Honey Roasted Spare Ribs

2011-10-29T10:05:00.000+01:00

Ribs are the ultimate finger food, all dignity is thrown out of the window when eating them but that's part of the charm and fun. Catching up with Sir Nigel's new programme this recipe shouted out to me and having nothing much better to do I went for a wander to pick up these epic pork ribs. There is more meat than bone on these beauties. This is why you should buy from a proper butcher.

Honey Roast Ribs
Ingredients
6 Tbsp Honey
3 Tbsp Oyster Sauce
1/4 tsp chili flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 ground black pepper
4 whole star anise
1.5 kg meaty pork ribs (about 12ish)

Method
Add the honey, oyster sauce, chili salt and black pepper to a roasting dish, mix up to form the marinade.
Add the ribs to the dish and coat well in the marinade.
Cover and leave for a minimum of 2 hours or preferably overnight.
Roast in a pre heated oven at 160C for 90 minutes. Turn the ribs occasionally.
once the 90 is up turn up the heat to 200 for 15 minutes. Watch very carefully because they can burn quickly at this heat
Once the sauce is sticky and the ribs are nicely charred then remove from the oven.

Serve with a knife and fork.......yeah right get stuck in and if your face and hands are not covered when you are done then you didn't eat them right.

Creamy Chicken and Chorizo pasta

2011-10-21T19:10:00.000+01:00

For tonights tea, I decided to raid my fridge and cupboards and create something using what I could find. For once the only thing in my fridge was not various packs of butter with a small amount left in them after another baking exploit.
I found: chorizo, chilis, cream and mushrooms. So with a tin of tomatoes, a bit of chicken from the freezer and the odd onion lazing around in the back of cupboard, I threw the lot in a pan and made this rather tasty pasta dish.

Creamy Chicken and Chorizo pasta.
Ingredients
1 onion, diced
1 tin of tomatoes
1 chicken breast, diced
1 red chili, (roughly chopped)
3-4 chestnut mushrooms
100g cooking chorizo
2 tbsp cream
100g(ish) wholemeal pasta

Method
Fry the onion, chili and chozizo for a couple of minutes until softened.
Add the chicken and cook for a few minutes until cooked through.
Add the mushroom and cook for a few more minutes.
Add the tin of tomtoes along with a splash of water and seasoning and simmer gently for around 20 minutes, add a splash more of water if it becomes too dry.
Cook the pasta according to packet instructions.
Take the sauce off the heat and stir in the cream.

Now do as all good Italians do and add the pasta to the sauce, not the other way around.
Mix it up so its all well combined

Enjoy.

Sheffield Supper Club

2011-10-20T21:16:00.001+01:00

Bit of a delayed blog this one due to the event taking place at the end of August just before I shimmied across the country and started a new job and thus completely slipping my mind to write it.

The Sheffield supper club is a recent addition addition to the supper club scene and currently the only one in Sheffield, hosted by Komal (@sweetkomal) a chef at the Fusion organic cafe in Sheffield.

As is becoming customary in these expeditions to secret locations, we spent 10 minutes wandering around before braving knocking on a door hoping that it was the correct one, fortunately it was and we were warmly greeted and shown to our dining area, to await our other diners.

The theme for this event was a taste of Spain

~Menu~

Starter:

Various tapas including Calameres with Aioli, Patatas Bravas, Tortilla and Pan con tomate.

Main:

Paella with Ensalata

Dessert:

Churros with Hot chocolate dipping sauce.

As you can see from the pictures, the food looked and was delicious. The paella took me straight back to Barcelona and was very very morish. My personal favourite however was the churros with melted chocolate, soft, warm, sugary, slightly spicy from the cinnamon and with a pot of delicious melted chocolate, you just can't ask for more from a pudding.

Overall the night was excellent. The time just blazed by, we arrived at 7 and left around 11 o clock, full of good food and having met many new interesting people.

Keep an eye out at http://sheffieldsupperclub.blogspot.com/m for details of the next one.

Chorizo and Broad Bean Risotto

2011-10-18T20:01:00.000+01:00

I'm not normally a fan of risottos but this recipe from Good Food drew me in and practically forced me to cook it. I blame the chorizo, I love the stuff. beautiful in a rich tomato sauce or simply eaten with a platter of good cheese, bread and of course wine.
This recipe is like any good risotto should be; rich, creamy and with the added spice of the chorizo, perfect on a crisp autumn evening.

Chorizo and Broad Bean Risotto
Ingredients
1tbsp olive oil
100g smoked bacon, diced
2 shallots, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
350g small cooking chorizo, diced
300g risotto rice
1 litre hot chicken stock
300g frozen broad beans

Method
Heat the oil in a medium sized pan then add the bacon, shallots, garlic and chorizo.
Cook gently for about 8 minutes
Add the rice and coat with the cooking juices.
Add just enough stock to cover the rice and bring to a simmer
Gently cook until absorbed
Continue adding a ladle at a time and gently cook.
Just before the final ladle, stir in the beans and cook for 3-4 minutes.

Serve and enjoy.

Chocolate Chili Souffle

2011-10-09T12:22:00.000+01:00

A blogger challenge that I've been following and reading for awhile is the We should cocoa challenge hosted by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog and Chelle at the Chocolate Teapot, both excellent blogs and well worth a read. The We should cocoa challenge is a challenge based around chocolate and a special ingredient, previous ingredients have included rose and apricot to name a couple. This months challenge was chili so for once I thought I'd enter.

Chocolate and chili are one of the greatest flavour combos dating back to the Aztecs and Mayans. I'd previously had a venture into chocolate/chili with a cake I made ages ago so obviously I couldn't do that again. I had been wanting to make souffle for a while now and this recipe is not quite a proper one, I'm working my way there. According to BBC Food these are more sturdy than normal souffles.

The recipe used is for a basic chocolate souffle which I have adapted to encompass this months special ingredient...

Chocolate Chili Souffle
Ingredients (makes 3)

100g Dark chocolate
75g butter plus a little for greasing
3 eggs
85g caster sugar
60g Plain flour
Half a red chili, finely chopped

Method
Heat the oven to 180C/160c (fan)
Butter 3 ramekins or cups like i did
Melt the chocolate with the butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water
Beat the eggs with sugar until fluffy and light
Add the chili to the flour
Fold in the flour/chili and then the chocolate mixture
Divide between the ramekins, the mixture can be now put in the fridge for later if you like

Bake for 8-12 minutes until the souffle rises and a crust forms, the middle should be still slightly gooey

Serve with cream

Enjoy

Verdict
sooooo good, rich, dark, chocolaty with little kicks of chili, beautiful.

Creamy Chicken and Pumpkin

2011-10-08T20:11:00.001+01:00

My aim this month is to complete and enter more than one bloggers challenge, I usually enter Doms brilliant random recipe challenge but this month I wanted to spread my wings...
I spied a nice little challenge over at What Kate Baked asking us to submit recipes based on an autumnal theme. My first thought did spring to a pumpkin pie, having never made one and every year promising myself I will make one, but with the last random recipe challenge finishing up with me cooking another tart, I decided to have a browse at what else I could cook. I stumbled across this nice little recipe on BBC Good Food and decided to give it ago.

Creamy Chicken and Pumpkin
Ingredients
20g pack dried porcini
1.5kg free range chicken, jointed in 8 pieces
1 lemon, halved
2 tbsp olive oil
25g butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
300g pumpkin, peeled, seeded and cut into 2cm cubes
200g chestnut mushrooms
284ml carton double cream

Method
Soak porcini in 300ml hot water for 30 mins.
Skin chicken and rub with lemon
Heat oil in a pan and brown chicken on all sides

Transfer to a casserole dish
Heat oven to 180C/160C(fan)
Melt the butter in a medium pan, once it stops foaming, add the onion and fry until golden
Remove the porcini from the water, rinse, pat dry and chop small.
Strain the porcini water, leaving the last spoonful.
Add the porcini and pumpkin to onions and saute for 5 minutes.
Add the fresh mushrooms and fry for a further 5 minutes

Stir in the cream and 5 tbsp of the porcini water
Simmer for 10 mins until slightly reduced
Pour over the chicken
Cover and cook for around 40 minutes, add a bit of water if the sauce becomes to dry.

Enjoy.

Verdict
Deliciously autumnal with lovely mushroomy flavours and sweet pumpkin. If you can't be bothered jointing a chicken just do what I did and buy 8 chicken thighs, sorted. Oh and brown the chicken more than I did, rookie mistake *hangs head in shame*.

Corned Beef Pie

2011-10-08T12:34:00.000+01:00

Ah corned beef, not the most glamorous or tastiest sounding ingredient but used the right way then its just superb.
We used to have it cold alongside fresh chips, fried eggs and beans. I used to put all four into a sandwich with a few pickled onions and tomato ketchup and then attempted to eat it before it disintegrated into a tasty mess.

This recipe is another way to use those forgotten tins in the back of the cupboard. It never lasted long once made and I have attempted to recreate it for you lot, due to not having the actual recipe it's from memory only. From the taste of it, I'm not far off.

I used a roasting tray for this about an inch deep and 29cm by 21cm

Ingredients

Pastry
600g Plain Flour
150g Butter
150g Lard
few tbsp of cold water (enough to form a dough)
1 egg beaten (for the glaze)

Filling
1 and a 1/2 tin of Corned Beef
4-5 medium potatoes
2-3 onions
Black pepper.

Method
Rub the lard and butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
Add the water a tbsp at a time and mix with a knife and your hands until the mixture comes together into a smooth dough.
Wrap in clingfilm and chill for about half n hour.

Filling
Peel and chop the potatoes into chunks, boil in a pan of water until soft.
Transfer to a bowl and add the corned beef and plenty of black pepper, mash together using a potato masher.
Fry the onions gently until soft, try not to brown too much.
Leave to cool both to completely, otherwise soggy pastry beckons.

Assembly
Grease your chosen pie dish or tray.
Divide the pastry into two and roll out to the desired length.
Place one half into the dish and press gently into the sides, trim off the excess pastry at the sides of the dish.
Add the onion in a thin layer, then add the mash and beef over the top, flatten down gently.

Brush egg round the edges of the pastry to help seal.
Place the other the half of the pastry over the top, trim off the excess and seal using a fork pressed gently all the way around.
Add any pastry decoration you like then brush liberally with the remaining egg.

Bake in a preheated oven for about 25 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.

Serve with onion gravy, fluffy mash and veg or simply have it cold with plenty of brown sauce.

Enjoy

Pork and pears

2011-10-06T19:34:00.001+01:00

Some people seem to have a problem cooking for me. No idea why, I'm perfectly pleasant and easily pleased when it comes to food. The only time I will have something to say is when a food crime is committed, namely overcooking or ruining quality ingredients, such as well-done steak for example. All I want when someone cooks for me is a simple yet tasty dish, I'm not looking for Michelin star, throw everything at the plate for several hours and hope it works type of cooking. So after persuading the Other Half to cook me dinner one Saturday evening, she opted for a recipe out of Nigel Slater's Fast Food (brilliant book, buy it now), pork and pears.

When the evening came around.... well the battle lines were drawn. I was booted out of my own kitchen with some force and ordered not to comment on what was happening or even enter the kitchen. A quick venture into the kitchen to find wine and to check my kitchen hadn't exploded was met with a barrel of abuse, knives whizzing past my head, followed by a frying pan and then with some nifty kung fu moves I was booted back into the living room through the door, there is still a Me shaped hole in the actual door.

10 minutes later after regaining consciousness, a rather tasty meal appeared. Turns out pears are very tasty with pork. It was a lovely contrast between the the caramelised pears and the slight saltiness of the pork alongside fluffy mash and bitter rocket.

Having not witnessed the actual cooking for fear of evisceration, I assume it went similar to this:

Pork and Pears
Ingredients
2 loin pork chops
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic (crushed flat and unpeeled)
2 ripe pears, cut into eights and cored, peeling optional
75ml dry white wine
75ml chicken/veg stock or water

Method
Season the pork with the salt and pepper
Heat the oil and garlic in a pan over a high heat, add the chops.
Seal on both sides
Turn the heat down and add the pears
Cook until both are tender and browned

Remove chops and pears to a warm plate
Pour most of the fat from the pan and return to the heat
Pour in the wine, scraping away the bits of pork and pear that are clinging to the pan
Add the stock and simmer until reduced by half
Pour over the chops and pears

Serve with fluffy mash and bitter leaves

Chocolate and Orange Tart - A Random Recipe

2011-09-29T16:13:00.002+01:00

This months random recipe challenge from Dom at Belleau Kitchen, was inspired by yours truly after last months challenge where I randomly went through my collection of Good Food Magazines in search of the elusive random recipe.

Having received the honour of inspiring a challenge, I felt I'd best take part otherwise an e-beating would no doubt occur.

So I gathered together a good handful of magazines and randomly choose the Easter edition from this year of which I landed on the chocolate section and hit a superb random recipe.

Now regular readers of this blog will realise that I like tarts .....OI!! stop sniggering in the back. There are various posts on here of my recent lemon tart and the fig tart which was another random recipe. So without further ado I give you this months random recipe....

Chocolate Orange Tart

Ingredients

Pastry

350g plain flour

200g butter , cubed

100g icing sugar

zest 1 orange

1 egg yolk , mixed with 2 tbsp water

Filling

250g dark chocolate

2 eggs , plus 1 white (leftover from pastry)

140g caster sugar

85g melted butter

85g plain flour

little cocoa , to serve

Method

Pastry

Rub the butter into the flour gently between your fingertips until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir in the sugar and zest
Add the yolk and water and mix together.
Using you hands bring together the mix into a dough ball, don't overwork.
Wrap tightly in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30mins to an hour.

Get two sheets of cling film, spread one across the work surface, place the dough in the middle and spread the other sheet over the top.

Roll out gently in between the two sheets of cling film (this method stops any excess flour being added to the pastry and drying it out).

Remove the top layer and using the bottom layer drape the pastry into a 26cm fluted tart tin.

Press gently into the tart tin and using a rolling pin roll across the top to trim off the edges.

Push the edges up a couple of millimetres to compensate for shrinkage.

Gently press a layer of foil into the tin and fill with baking beans.

Bake in a preheated oven (180C) for 15 minutes.

Remove the foil and beans and bake for another 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Filling

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water

beat the eggs with the sugar until thick and pale

fold in the melted butter, flour and chocolate

Pour into the pastry case and leave to settle for a minute

Place in the oven at 160C/140C(fan) for 25 minutes

Remove and allow to cool slightly

Sprinkle over cocoa powder and serve warm with cream or ice cream.

Enjoy

Verdict

Just superb, crumbly orange pastry and thick gooey chocolate filling. I cheated a bit on this recipe, the recipe stated to make 8 deep individual tarts but I don't own the required equipment so I just made a big one. You will have enough pastry with plenty spare if you use a 26cm tin and the filling is exactly the right amount for a tray this size.

Thanks again to Dom for hosting and choosing me as his inspiration.

Roast Chicken

2011-09-17T14:11:00.000+01:00

I do love roast chicken. done properly it would be up there as one of my favourite foods. It baffles me why people are scared to even have a go at it. It's painfully simple and the results are oh so good. Living on my own, roasting a whole bird pretty much sorts out meals for the following few days. This one, which I found while aimlessly wandering round the supermarket in the reduced to clear section (last day of use by date) cost me 3 quid for a large free range chicken and lasted me 3 days, bargain.

Simple Roast chicken
Ingredients
1 whole chicken
vast amounts of fresh rosemary (or herb of your choice)
1 bulb of garlic. (this is the minimum amount, I've read recipes that range from 40 - 100 cloves of garlic)
lots of olive oil
salt + pepper

Method
Line a roasting dish with tin foil
Stick the chicky in the dish
Drown in olive oil
Scatter as many bulbs of garlic as you wish around it, stick some between the chickens legs and thighs also.
Sprinkle over your choice of herbage
Sprinkle over plenty of salt and pepper
Cover with a tin foil lid and place in a preheated oven at 180C until its done (supermarkets usually put a time on the packet so just use this if not then: 25 mins per 450g plus 15 mins extra.
Baste a few times during the cooking time and for the last 30 minutes take the foil lid off to allow the skin to brown up nicely.

Enjoy.

Squash, Chicken and Couscous one pot - A Random Recipe

2011-08-29T18:28:00.001+01:00

I've been a bit rubbish with blogger challenges recently, I start off the month with all the best intentions then before I realise, it's the next month and I've missed it again. Not this month however, this month I was determined..

Dom challenged us this month to go back to basics with the original random recipe challenge of simply picking a cookbook at random then randomly picking a recipe from that book. Now I have a slight confession to make the recipe may have been random but the book usually wasn't, its hard to shuffle cookbooks (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
so to make this month properly random, I decided to use the ever growing pile of Good Food Magazines building up in the corner. I grabbed an handful and randomly shuffled through them (much easier). I landed on the August 2011 issue and landed on page 48-49, I then closed my eyes and randomly dropped a coin on the pages to pick a recipe. so I give you.......

Squash, Chicken and Couscous one pot
Ingredients
2 Tbsp Harrisa paste
1 Tsp each of ground Cumin and Coriander
2 red onions, halved and cut into thin wedges
2 skinless chicken breasts, bite sized chunks
1 small butternut squash, chopped into bite sized pieces, no need to peel
2 X 400g Tins of tomatoes
zest and juice of 2 Lemons
200g Cherry Tomatoes
140g Couscous
small bunch of coriander

Method
Heat a large non-stick casserole dish or pan on the hob.
Add the harissa, spices and onions, stir and cook gently for 10 minutes until soft.
Add the chicken and brown for 5-10 minutes.
Add squash, stir to combine, add a splash of water if it starts to stick.
Cook for a further 5 minutes.
Tip the canned tomatoes in with 1/2 can of water, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes.
Add the lemon zest and juice, cherry toms, couscous and seasoning.
Cover and turn off the heat, leave on the hob for 10 minutes, then stir through the coriander and serve.

Verdict
A very nice one pot dish. I altered the recipe a bit, substituting chicken breasts for thighs (cheaper/tastier) and I used Pomodorino Tomatoes instead of Cherry Tomatoes. The recipe states to not bother peeling the squash, personally I would, but that's just me, also next time I may add a little less lemon. This is also rather nice cold the next day so good for pack lunches etc...

Lemon Tart

2011-08-07T23:43:00.000+01:00

I do like a lemon dessert and I'm usually drawn to these on a menu first, well either that or desserts involving rhubarb. One of my personal favourites is the classic lemon dessert, the lemon tart or tart au citron (hey check me out I'm multilingual) depending on which side of the English channel you are on. But having eaten my fair share I have never actually made one, so as usual I thought I'd give it a go.

Lemon Tart
Ingredients

Pastry
210g Plain flour
35g Icing sugar
125g Butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 Egg yolk
1 tsp of water

Filling
5 Large eggs
225g Caster Sugar
125ml Double cream
Zest and juice of four lemons

Method

Pastry
Mix the flour and sugar together, add the butter.
Rub the butter into the flour gently between your fingertips until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Add the yolk and water and mix together.
Using you hands bring together the mix into a dough ball, don't overwork.
Wrap tightly in cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30mins to an hour.

Get two sheets of cling film, spread one across the work surface, place the dough in the middle and spread the other sheet over the top.
Roll out gently in between the two sheets of cling film (this method stops any excess flour being added to the pastry and drying it out).
Remove the top layer and using the bottom layer drape the pastry into a 26cm fluted tart tin.
Press gently into the tart tin and using a rolling pin roll across the top to trim off the edges.
Push the edges up a couple of millimetres to compensate for shrinkage.

Gently press a layer of foil into the tin and fill with baking beans.
Bake in a preheated oven (180C) for 12 minutes.
Remove the foil and beans and bake for another 12 minutes.
Remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Filling
Whisk up the eggs in a bowl until combined.
Add the remaining ingredients and whisk again until well combined.
Transfer to a jug and pour into the cooled tart case.

Bake in a preheated oven at 140C for 30-35 minutes.

Remove from the oven and when cooler remove the tart from the tin.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.

Enjoy

Ultimate Steak Sarnie

2011-07-29T17:42:00.000+01:00

Yes I know it's a bit of a claim to make and I'm sure you all have your own version of this culinary masterpiece but here is my version of the mighty steak sarnie.

I think for a steak sarnie to be successful it relies on a few key parts;

The Steak
Obviously it's not gonna be a steak sarnie without this is it, but what cut? Personally I don't think you need to buy anything more pricey than rump steak, sirloin is a bit expensive to put in a sandwich and if anybody puts fillet in there I will hunt you down and confiscate it. Buy it from your butcher not a supermarket for a much better quality piece of beef. The steak in the picture cost me £5, filled a dinner plate and was enough for 3 sandwiches.

The Bread
A nice crusty ciabatta is my choice for this and not, as my dad suggested, a couple of slices of hovis...

Greenery
A bit of variety I think is needed here, Don't bother with iceberg, it has it's place but this is not it. Try watercress or rocket for a nice peppery flavour.

Beyond these elements I reckon you cant go wrong with most other additions...apart from cheese, back away from the cheese.

Ultimate steak sarnie (makes one)
Rump steak (as much as you wish )
Half a ciabatta loaf
Handful of mixed leaves

Fried onions
Splash of oil
half an onion

Butter dressing
Splash of oil
1 clove of garlic
Large lump of butter
Herbage of your choice, I went for rosemary.

Method
Slice your ciabatta and layer up with a good handful of greenery.
Season your steak with olive oil and black pepper and salt.
Thinly slice up the onion and fry gently in a frying pan until soft and golden brown, set aside.
Crush the garlic and fry gently in a saucepan until slightly golden, add the butter and herbs, set aside.

The Steak
Get a griddle pan and place it on the hob until it achieves nuclear temperatures, hotter than the fires of hell is required for this.
Gently lay your steak away from you on the griddle and leave it alone. Do not touch, poke, prod or move it until its time to turn it over.
In terms of timings, it all depends on how well you want your steak cooked and how thick your steak is. Mine was about a centimetre thick and took about 1 -1.30 minutes on each side for medium rare.
Once done on both sides, leave to rest for a few minutes on a warm plate.

Slice up and layer on top of the greenery.
Drizzle over the garlic herb butter and top with the fried onions.
Use the top layer of the ciabatta to soak up the juices left up on the plate after slicing the steak.

Belissimo!

Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Muffins (ish)

2011-07-25T21:57:00.000+01:00

I knew these wouldn't work before I even started. However... I went ahead anyway as I'd bought the stuff to make them and I thought I would try my luck. It's quite tricky to make muffins when you don't have a decent tray to support them in the oven and it's a sad sight watching a muffin case flatten as mixture is poured into it. If you have the required equipment I'm sure they would work quite well...they tasted nice anyways.

Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Muffins
Ingredients
250g Plain Flour
20g Baking powder
170g Light brown soft sugar
170ml Whole milk
2 Eggs
110g Soft Butter
150g Raspberries
70g Dark Chocolate, cut into chunks.

Method
Add all ingredients to a bowl, apart from the raspberries and chocolate.
Mix with an electric whisk or hand power until all ingredients are combined.

Stir in the chocolate and raspberries, gently. Don't over mix.

Spoon the mixture into muffin cases in a muffin tin (if you have one). (watch as they start to flatten, shed a tear... just me this bit then?)
Stick into a preheated oven at 200C
Bake for around 15 minutes until golden brown on top and risen.
Remove and cool on a wire rack

Enjoy

Black Banana Cake

2011-07-17T19:31:00.001+01:00

It's been awhile since I did any decent cooking or baking, what with the madness that has been the last few weeks. So to get back into it I thought I would do something fairly easy but very tasty. While wondering what to cook, I had a wander round my kitchen and found some rather ripe and squishy bananas which reminded me about Nigel Slater's black banana cake....

I have altered the recipe slightly, adjusting to what I had in my cupboard. The original recipe is here

Black Banana Cake
Ingredients
175g unsalted butter
140g golden caster sugar/35g muscavado sugar
75g ground almonds
2 eggs
175g self raising flour
2 very ripe bananas
drop of vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate/50g white chocolate (cut up into tiny chunks)
sprinkle of brown sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 170C
Line the base and sides of a loaf tin (20cm/12cm)
Beat the sugars and butter together until light and fluffy
Slowly beat in the eggs to the butter mixture
Beat in the flour and almonds
Chop up the bananas into small pieces and mix gently into the mix along with the chocolate and vanilla extract. Do not over mix.

Spoon the batter into the loaf tin, dust with brown sugar and bake for 1 hour - 1 hour and 10 mins

Cover the cake with foil if the top starts to darken to quickly.
Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack

Serve and enjoy.

Chicken in a Spicy Coconut Broth

2011-06-17T12:40:00.001+01:00

What is it with Thai soups? From my, albeit, limited experience of them the more they look like dish water the more amazing they taste. Every spoonful is a constant battle for the taste buds attention with a complex blend of different flavours and this one is no exception.

The recipe is a very easy one from Ramsay's World Kitchen and I could literally drink the broth by the gallon.

Recipe serves 4-6 as a starter

Chicken in a Spicy Coconut Broth (tom ka gai)

Ingredients
2 boneless chicken breasts
Sea salt and black pepper
400ml tin of coconut milk
600ml water
3cm fresh root ginger, peeled and sliced
4 kaffir lime leaves, ripped up
1 lemongrass stalk, halved length ways
2 red chillies, halved length ways and deseeded
1 Tsp palm sugar or light brown soft sugar
21/2 Tbsp of Fish sauce
2 tbsp lime juice
100g button mushrooms
handful of coriander leaves

Method
Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces, sprinkle with salt and pepper and set aside
Pour the coconut milk into a pan along with 600ml of water
Add the ginger, kaffir, lemongrass, chillies, sugar, fish sauce and lime juice
Bring to a simmer and cook gently for about 5 minutes, allowing the flavours to infuse
Add the mushrooms and simmer for 3 minutes
Add the chicken and simmer until cooked through, about 2 minutes.
Serve by discarding the chili, lemongrass, ginger and lime leaves or be traditional and leave them in but don't eat them.
Garnish with coriander

Enjoy

100 Blog Posts

2011-06-03T23:11:00.000+01:00

Waaaaay back in the summer of last year, I had finished my degree and waiting for my next qualification to begin in September. One day I got bored and decided to have a go at writing a blog. I figured if I was to stick at it then it would have to be something I was interested in. so what better than food? Pretty much every single part of my life revolves around the stuff in some way so I may as well write about it as well.

I never actually thought I would be sat here writing my 100th post, I figured once I started University again by September I'd get bored with it and leave it to be forgotten in the depths of the Internet but alas no and here I am writing this and wondering what blog post 101 will contain.

It's been a fun 11 months. The blog plus Twitter has opened up many an opportunity and events that otherwise I would never have known about it. So I think to mark 100 posts I'll recap on some highlights:

Recipes
Birthday cake - easily one of the best cakes I've made and my first venture into sugar craft

Buttermilk scones - the first ever recipe post.

Beef wellington - Christmas Dinner, beats turkey any day

Chicken and papaya curry - The first blogger challenge hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen

Chocolate, honeycomb and truffle cake - well just look at it, it's huge!

Fig Tart - another blogger challenge, a thing of beauty.

Events

My Secret Tea Room - hosted by the delightful 'Bakelady' with superb home baking and my first ever underground supper club

The Spice Club - another underground supper club hosted by Monica and her lovely family, superb Indian food.

Test Space Kitchen - a deconstructed whole hog followed by a huge Eton mess in an abandoned run down old building? you couldn't make this stuff up.

Clandestine Cake Club - turn up with a cake in a random location, eat loads more of other peoples cake, meet lots of lovely people. drink tea. - brilliant

Well there you are, a few highlights since I started and I haven't mentioned all the superb restaurants I have visited in Leeds, Sheffield, London, Edinburgh etc...

Here's to the next hundred, hope you will join me.

Cheers

Mixed Berry Cake with Cheesecake Frosting.

2011-06-03T22:20:00.000+01:00

For this months Clandestine Cake Club meeting the theme was Flirtatiously Fruity and Succulent Savoury. For an excellent review go here and look at what else turned up.

I decided to go for the flirtatiously fruity and decided to make a recipe I found on BBC Good Food and adapted slightly.

Mixed Berry Cake with Cheesecake Frosting
Ingredients
175g soft butter
175g golden caster sugar
3 Large Eggs
225g Self Raising Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
142ml carton of sour cream
350g of mixed berries. I used; blueberries, raspberries and blackberries

Frosting
200g Philadelphia cream cheese
100g icing sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 180C (fan =160C)
Line a deep loose based cake tin.
Mix the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and vanilla and beat together until well mixed.

Beat in 4tbsp of the soured cream.

Stir in the fruit gently, leave about 50g to decorate.

Tip into the tin and bake for 50 minutes until golden brown and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the cake.
Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes then tip out onto a wire rack to finish cooling

Frosting
Beat the soft cheese, icing sugar and the remaining sour cream together until smooth and creamy.
Spread out on top and decorate with the remaining fruit.

Enjoy.

I took a picture of my plate after my first assault of the rather long table filled with cake at this months event:

Not bad for a first course. Yum

Strawberry Mojito Pudding

2011-05-31T23:21:00.000+01:00

While at the grocers picking up veg for my Summer Tart I spied a large box of English Strawberries for £1.70 so I thought I would do a dessert as well.

Again, being lazy, I wanted to keep it simple but big on flavour.

I decided to attempt to combine the flavours of a Mojito (easily my favourite cocktail after a Vesper Martini) along with the summer classic of Strawberries and Cream.

Ingredients
Punnet of English Strawberries
Mint leaves (to taste)
25ml measure of Golden Rum
1 Tbsp golden Caster Sugar

250ml Double cream
1Tbsp Icing sugar

Method
Remove the stalk from about half of the strawberries and cut in half.
Place in a bowl and pour over the Rum and Caster Sugar
Rip up some mint leaves and add them to bowl.
Mix up and leave for an hour or so.

Whisk up the cream until stiff using an electic hand whisk or elbow power.
Beat in icing sugar.
Tip in the contents of the bowl and mix in gently.

To serve:
Thinly slice some remaining strawberries and place in the bottom of a martini glass.
Spoon over the strawberries and cream
Garnish with a sprig of mint and more strawberries

Enjoy

Simple Summer Tart

2011-05-31T19:53:00.002+01:00

Seeking inspiration for my dinner this evening, I had a quick look on BBC food to see what was in season and holy mackerel(in season) do I like this time of year for food.

You've got; to name just a few:

lamb, french beans, peas, mangetout, radish, raspberry, sardines and the mighty tomato and strawberries.

I was in the mood for something easy to make, so with asparagus reaching the end of it's season I had a wander to the grocers to pick up some alongside some tomatoes to make a simple flavourful tart.

Ingredients
250g Ready made puff pastry (this just about covers a 20cm/30cm tray)
A little beaten egg

I'm not gonna give amounts for this because you can use as little or as much of the ingredient you prefer or even nothing I've used and create your own using your favourites.

Asparagus
Tomatoes
Mozzarella
Serrano ham
Red onion
Black pepper
Fresh basil

Method
Pre heat the oven to 200C
Grease the tray with a little oil.
Roll out the pastry, large enough to cover the bottom of the tray and drape it over.

Brush with egg and put it into the oven for 2 minutes, this creates a waterproof layer.
Remove from the oven and place on whatever ingredients you like, however you like.

Bake for 20 minute or until the pastry is puffed up and golden.

I ground some black pepper and ripped some fresh basil over at this point.

Enjoy.

Andhra banana curry

2011-05-26T20:13:00.001+01:00

In my current school, every other Wednesday a world food club is held. This weeks theme was Indian.

A cook off challenge was issued to me from the head of department and who I am to refuse a cooking challenge.

Instead of playing it safe and doing something fairly standard I decided to come at it from another angle and try something a bit unusual and different...a curry made with bananas from Ramsay's great escape cookbook.

So having endured a day of abuse, mocking and mind games the big cook off challenge arrived:

Andhra banana curry
Ingredients
4 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
3cm ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1tsp urad dal
2tbsp vegetable oil
8 curry leaves
1tsp black mustard seeds
1tsp hot chili powder
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tbsp tamarind paste
400ml water
6 large unripe bananas, peeled and cut into 4cm pieces
2 tbsp grated fresh coconut.

Method
Put the garlic, ginger, urad dal and a splash of water into a food processor and blend to a fine wet paste, set aside
Heat the oil in a wok and add the curry leaves and mustard seeds. cook for a minute until the seeds start spluttering.
Add the garlic paste into the pan with the wok with the turmeric and chili powder.
Fry for 5 minutes then add the tamarind paste.
Pour in the water and stir well, simmer for 2 minutes
Add the bananas and cook gently until the sauce thickens
Transfer into a warm bowl, stir in the coconut and serve.

Verdict: I will let the contrasting opinions sum this one up:

Before:
'A banana curry? really?'
'What on earth are you putting bananas in a curry for?'
'Are you mad?'

After:
*in a broad yorkshire accent*: 'ooo thats reeeeet nice'
'Thats awesome sir'
'a very good balanced dish' (said grudingly from the HOD)

A draw was decided upon after an argument but I won really.

Tiramisu Cake

2011-05-26T20:11:00.000+01:00

Last week I reached the rip old age of 23 (pre-orders walking stick). To celebrate this joyous of joyful days the Other Half, instead of making me a usual birthday cake, decided to make a Tiramisu cake for me which is hands down one of my all time favourite desserts. So having stuffed my face with it I demanded the recipe to share with you lovely lot.

Tiramisu Cake
200g tub mascarpone cheese
75g (3oz) caster sugar
60ml (4tbsp) Marsala wine
150g (5oz) plain chocolate, melted
300ml (1/2pt) double cream
150ml (1/4pt) strong black coffee, use the good stuff if you can, not instant.
45ml (3tbsp) coffee liqueur, such as Tia Maria
24 sponge fingers
Chocolate curls to decorate

Method
Place the mascarpone cheese in a large bowl and beat in the sugar and Marsala wine. Stir in the melted chocolate.

In a separate bowl, softly whip two-thirds of the cream. Fold the cream into the chocolate mixture.

Line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin with clingfilm. Mix together the coffee and coffee liqueur. Trim 8 of the sponge fingers to fit the base of the tin. Dip each trimmed sponge finger into the coffee mixture, then place in the base of the tin.

Spread over half the chocolate cream, then top with 8 more sponge fingers dipped in the coffee mixture.

Spread over the rest of the chocolate cream and cover with the rest of the dipped sponge fingers pressing down gently. Cover with clingfilm and foil. Chill in the fridge overnight.

To serve, turn out on to a plate. Softly whip the rest of the cream and spread over the top of the terrine. Decorate with chocolate curls.

Enjoy

Oaty Rum Cookies

2011-05-17T22:12:00.001+01:00

After a long day of dealing with 12 year olds, I fancied chilling out with some easy baking. I was debating about what to make when I remembered I had left sultanas soaking overnight in spiced rum to make cookies...2 weeks ago. So I thought I'd better use them...

Ingredients
100g Butter
100g Golden Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Tsp of Cinnamon
100g Rolled oats
100g Wholemeal flour
1.5 tsp Baking powder
100g Sultanas (soaked in 25ml of spiced rum for a few hours/overnight/2 weeks)

Method
Beat the sugar into the butter with an electric whisk until fluffy.
Beat in the cinnamon and eggs.
In another bowl, mix together the flour, oats, sultanas and baking powder.
Add to the butter mixture and mix together.
Drop heaped dessert spoonfuls, or a tablespoon if want big ones, onto a greased baking sheet.
Bake for about 15 minutes in a preheated oven at 160C
Cool on the tray for a minute or two then transfer to a cooling rack.
Serve with.....do I really have to finish this sentence?

Enjoy.

Fig Tart

2011-05-10T22:48:00.002+01:00

The blogger challenge this month over at Belleau Kitchen was 'Just Desserts'. Considering the amount I bake I dont actually own any pure dessert books so as instructed I picked from the books that had desserts in and then randomly picked a recipe from one of those.

The book I ended up picking was Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets.

Now anybody who follows Raymond Blanc's recent programme or owns this book will know this book contains the quite legendary Piece Montee croquembouche, a literal mountain of choux pastry, caramel and spun sugar....fortunately I didnt land on this *breathes a sigh of relief* and instead I landed on his Fig Tart....

Fig Tart
Ingredients
Pastry
250g Plain Flour
75g Icing Sugar
pinch of salt
120g unsalted butter (diced at room temp)
2 egg yolks
1-2 tsp cold water

Filling
150g Blackcurrants
150g Semi Dried figs 9stalks removed)
100g Fig Jam
12 Fresh Figs

Glaze
50g Fig Jam

Method
Pastry Case
In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, salt together.
Make a well and add the yolks and water
Mix together in concentric circles using your finger tips to bring together into a soft dough.
Remove 30g and wrap in clingfilm for later.
Roll into a cylinder and cut in half.

Squash each half into a circle 2cm thick and wrap up with clingfilm.
Rest one in the fridge for 30 minutes, the other can be frozen for future use.

Place the rested dough on a large sheet of cling film and place another sheet over it. (this rolling out method is brilliant by the way)

Roll out the pastry in the cling film in a circle shape to about 0.3cm thick.

Remove and discard the top sheet of cling film.

Place a tart ring on a flat baking sheet covered with baking paper.

Drap the pastry into the tart ring by lifting the closest two corners of the clingfilm and inverting into the ring.
Use the little piece of pastry to mould into the ring.
Use a rolling pin to take off the excess around the edges and then push up the pastry above the edge by 2mm to compensate for shrinkage.

Rest for up to an hour in the fridge.
Preheat the oven and abaking stone or a heavy baking tray to 170 C.
Slide the pastry case off the tray onto the stone/tray and bake for 25 minutes.
Remove and brush with egg white.
Leave to cool.

Have a cup of tea and breathe.

Filling
Puree the soft figs in a food processor.
Crush the blackberries.
Mix both soft figs and blackberries in a bowl with the fig jam.

Pour into the cooled tart case and spread out evenly.

Quarter or half your figs and lay out in circles from the middle outwards.
Bake for 25 minutes at 170C.
Remove and cool.

Glaze
Melt the jam and brush over the figs.

Serve sprinkled with Icing sugar and a dollop of creme fraiche.

Verdict: Absolutley delicious, lovely contrast between sweet figs and the sharpness of the blackberries alongside the lovely crumbly pastry. An excellent recipe to try if you want to test yourself in terms of pastry and the new techniques I have picked up will be very useful indeed.

Tomato and Chorizo Sauce

2011-05-09T22:26:00.000+01:00

A recent conversation with a friend of mine about a pasta sauce he made up recently got me thinking, he stated the key to it was making it very slowly to draw out all the flavour, most of the pasta sauces I make take about 10 minutes so being inspired by this I went home and had a go at making my own. (the chicken thighs in this dish are entirely optional)

Ingredients
1 Onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
50g chorizo, chopped into small pieces
50g of sun dried tomatoes, roughly chopped
250g Passata
150ml Water
good splash of red wine
1 tbsp olive oil.
Salt and black Pepper

2 chicken thighs (if using)
1 tbsp olive oil
Black pepper

Method
Prepare all the ingredients
If using the Chicken, then bush with oil and grind over some black pepper. roast in the oven at 190C for 20 minutes.

Gently heat the oil in a frying pan and gently cook the garlic for 1 minute, Do not burn.
Add the onion, Chorizo and sun dried tomatoes.

Cook very gently for 15-20 minutes, do not brown the onions and stir occasionally. No more than a very tiny sizzle should be heard.
Transfer to a saucepan, again on a gentle heat with the Passata and water.
Turn up the heat on the frying pan.
Remove the chicken from the oven and place skin side down in the frying pan, rock the chicken and brown on all sides, add to the saucepan.

Pour a good glug of the wine into the frying pan to deglaze, pour into the saucepan.
Season the sauce to taste
Simmer on a low heat for 25 minutes.

The sauce is done when it resembles lava glooping in the pan and is reduced by about half.

Serve with pasta, new potatoes, however you like.

Enjoy.

Simple Chocolate Cake

2011-05-09T21:58:00.001+01:00

Anybody can bake, its easy, simply follow the basic rules to whatever you are making and you really can't go wrong.

A request came in today from the Head of Department for a few cakes for the last lesson with the year 11's, before they leave, preferably a chocolate one and who am I to turn down an opportuinty to bake when I should be working....

This recipe is a standard recipe for a no frills speedy chocolate sponge cake. Dom at Belleau Kitchen did a post similar to this recently here.

So anyway the rules, unfortunatly baking is not someting you can randomly throw ingredients in until it tastes nice but they are fairly simple so if you follow them you will be fine.

Each ingredient weighs the same. If you use 100g of flour then use 100g of the other ingredients

1 egg = average weight is 50g

Dont overbeat, when its smooth and all combined then stop.
Line your tin, however annoying it might be to do its more annoying when its stuck to the tin when you try and take it out.
Do not open your oven part way through the allotted cooking time, just don't not under any circumstances, your cake will sink in the centre and look a bit rubbish, wait until at least two thirds of the time has passed.

Simple chocolate sponge
Ingredients
190g Self Raising flour
10g Cocoa powder
200g Butter
200g Caster Sugar
4 Eggs

Method
Weigh out and combine all ingredients in a bowl, beat with an electric whisk until smooth.
Divide equally between two lined 8 inch cake tins.
Level out the mixture in the tin with the back of a spoon.
Place in a pre heated oven at 190C for 20-25 minutes.
Remove from oven and tin and cool on a wire rack.
Decorate however you like

It really is as easy as that.

I decorated the above cake by beating 80g of butter with 155g of icing sugar and 5g of cocoa powder until combined and then sandwiched the two cakes together before sprinkling on icing sugar.

So go on then what are you waiting for.

Singapore-Style South-Indian Chicken Curry

2011-04-28T22:04:00.001+01:00

For this months random recipe bloggers challenge, Dom at Belleau Kitchen challenged us to use the first cookbook we ever bought or were given. Now I haven't a clue what mine was and if I did have the slightest idea it would probably be a couple of hundred miles away back in my home county of Cumbria. So I changed it a little bit (sorry Dom) to the first cookbook I bought when I left for university all those many moons ago. The cookbook I bought was Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible which I picked up in a charity shop for the absolute bargain price of £3.75.

The recipe I landed on after flicking through was right up my street this time (thankfully) and here it is:

Singapore-Style South-Indian Chicken Curry (serves 4)
Ingredients

2 1/2 tbsp Madras curry powder
4 chicken legs, divided into thigh and drumstick (skinned if you prefer)
3 tbsp corn or peanut oil
6 medium shallots, finely chopped
5cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
15-20 curry leaves
1 medium cinnamon stick
4-5 dried hot chillies
4 small waxy red potatoes, peeled and halved
1 3/4 tsp salt
350ml can of coconut milk
2 tbsp tamarind paste
2 medium tomatoes, cut into 8 pieces

Method
Rub 1 1/2 tbsp of curry powder into the chicken and set aside.
Add the rest to 250ml of water and set aside

Pour the oil into a frying pan
Once hot, add the shallots, half the ginger, half the garlic, curry leaves, cinnamon stick and red chillies

Stir and fry for 5 minutes until golden.

Add the curry powder water mixture.

Stir and cook for about 5 minutes
Transfer everything into a larger pan with a lid and add potatoes, chicken, salt and 250ml of water.

Stir and bring to the boil
Stick the lid on and leave to simmer for 25 minutes.
Add the coconut milk and tamarind
Stir and cook uncovered for 5 minutes

It can be left here for several hours if prepping in advance

Reheat if required and add the tomatoes and the remaining ginger and garlic
Cook for a further 5 minutes
Serve with rice.

Enjoy

Verdict
Very tasty curry, chicken is very tender with a lovely combination of spices. Next time I may reduce the sauce a bit because it was a bit to runny for my liking and use a slightly hotter madras powder.

Carrot and Ginger Cake

2011-04-21T11:06:00.001+01:00

Ancient legend states that the humble carrot should always be a savoury vegetable, nowadays we say nay and shove it in cakes. So being a bit bored last night, I decided to have a go at my first ever carrot cake:

Carrot and Ginger Cake
Ingredients

175g Dark Brown Soft sugar
175ml Sunflower oil
3 large Eggs, lightly beaten
180g (ish) Grated Carrots
100g Sultanas
zest of a large Orange
175g Self raising flour
1tsp of Bicarbonate of soda
1tsp Cinnamon
1tsp Ground ginger
thumb sized amount of fresh Ginger, grated
1/2 tsp Nutmeg.

100g Icing sugar
1/2 tsp Mixed spice
1-2tbsp Water

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan)
Line your tin, I used a springform 23cm circle cake tin but you could use a loaf tin, a square tin etc.. cooking time will vary though.
Add the sugar to a mixing bowl, add the oil followed by the eggs. Mix together with a wooden spoon

Stir in the grated carrots, fresh ginger, sultanas and orange zest.

Sift in the flour, bicarb, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.

Fold all the ingredients together until well combined - should be very runny.

Pour mixture into your cake tin and bake for 40 -45 minutes.

Insert a skewer to check if it is cooked, if it comes out clean it is done.
Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then remove and cool on a wire rack.

Mix icing sugar and mixed spice in a dish with 1-2 tbsp of water.
Drizzle over cake as desired.

Serve and enjoy.

Ale #5 Anchor Steam

2011-04-18T23:59:00.001+01:00

Appearance: Golden ale

Aroma: Hoppy, slight caramel

Flavour: Hoppy, Slightly Grainy, hints of caramel. Medium body

Why its on here:
The Anchor Brewery is a small brewery in San Francisco. Anchor steam is it's flagship beer. I first had this on a family holiday to San Francisco when my dad brought me a glass to sneakily drink away from the eyes of the bar and waiting staff (I was 19 and very bitter about being illegal for me to drink again). I wouldnt call it a great beer but drinking it floods back memories of an excellent (albeit a very dry) holiday in a superb city.

Rhubarb and Custard Cake

2011-04-18T23:01:00.001+01:00

This months brief for Clandestine Cake Club was Victorian and was held at Harvey Nichols, Leeds.

Now this theme wasn't springing me any inspiration and any idea I did have other people seemed to be doing it, so after a tweet from our host and founder telling me to forget the brief a few ideas for a cake involving rhubarb came to mind especially since the forced rhubarb season is coming to a close and I hadnt done anything with it.

Yorkshire is quite well known for its Rhubarb Triangle consisting of Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield. Forced rhubarb, if you don't know, is grown in pitch black hot warehouses at an accelerated rate, the absence of light makes the rhubarb feed off energy from its roots and the heat speeds up its growth. This version is a lot sweeter, pinker in colour and less fibrous than its slower grown cousin.

So anyway I had a couple of ideas but the lack of time to experiment lead me to BBC Food in search of a recipe.

Rhubarb and Custard Cake
400g Rhubarb (forced or normal)
50g Caster Sugar

25og Soft butter
150g pot of Ambrosia Custard
250g SR Flour
1/2 tsp Baking powder
4 large Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla extract
250g Golden Caster sugar

Wash the rhubarb and shake off the excess water
Chop into finger size pieces.
Place on a baking tray and pour over the 50g of caster sugar.
Shake about until well covered and the rhubarb is on one level.
Cover with foil and bake for 15 mins at 180C.
Remove foil and bake for a further five minutes.

Drain off the juices and remove the rhubarb from the tray to cool.
Remove 3 tbsp of the custard from the pot and reserve.
Combine the rest of the custard, butter, flour, golden caster sugar, vanilla extract, eggs and baking powder in a bowl with an electric whisk until smooth and creamy.

Spoon a third of the mixture into a loose bottomed/springform 23cm lined cake tin.
Place a layer of rhubarb over the top.
Top with another third of the mixture, spread out as best as you can.
Place another layer of rhubarb.
Spoon on the remainder of the mixture, don't worry about spreading too neatly.
Top the cake with the remaining rhubarb and dot the remaining custard over the top of it.

Bake in a Preheated oven for 40 minutes
Watch carefully, when the cake top goes golden brown after this time, remove and cover with foil or it will burn like mine nearly did. Cook for a further 20 or so minutes.
Check it is cooked by inserting a skewer, if it comes out clean its done.
Leave to cool in the tin.
Remove, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.

Enjoy.

Coffee Culture. York

2011-04-18T14:32:00.001+01:00

Coffee Culture is a little coffee shop on Goodramgate in York. We headed here after a recommendation on twitter. Coffee Culture is very cosy, set over 3 floors with wooden chairs mixed in with sofas and very comfortable looking window seats with good views over the busy street below.

We ordered a pot of teapigs breakfast tea, and Australian Skybury Flat White from York Coffee Emporium and a strawberry milkshake.

The coffee was excellent, not my usual drink, being a black coffee and espresso drinker, but after being recommended to try it, I was very impressed and it came with some very nice coffee art.

Service was very good, friendly and speedy

Overall a nice little coffee place and well worth a visit.

Saengarun, Leeds

2011-04-14T14:37:00.001+01:00

I've been getting into Thai food recently and we have often pondered visiting some of Leeds Thai restaurants but never actually been to them. I mentioned this on Twitter and @Artemisfoul1812 suggested a little place on Briggate called Saengarun with a very reasonable lunch menu, 2 courses for £9.

The decor is very basic and minimal with a few oriental images around the room, it's pretty much the opposite of the highly decorated rooms of some oriental and Asian restaurants.
We were given the menus to look through and I'm usually not one to stick to a set lunch menu when given the option of the full menu.

I opted for the Poh Teak to start, a Fisherman's soup with squid, mussels and king prawns.

The colour of the broth didn't look very appealing but what it lacked in appeal it more than made up in flavour. It started off with the most intense fish soup flavour combined with all the flavour of the lemongrass, coriander and lime followed by wave after wave of chilli heat. It was superb. The large pieces of seafood were also well cooked. Be warned this may be a touch hot for some as I thought my face was melting at one point, especially as you work down the bowl.

For my main I went for Gaeng Ped Yang, boneless duck in a coconut milk based red curry with pineapple and Thai basil.

After the starter I was not looking forward to this, faced with more heat after the inferno of the first dish, I was about ready to crawl under the table and wave the white flag. Fortunately this wasn't a hot curry, It was however, excellent, a beautiful vivid red curry with huge pieces of soft duck and a sauce with a great depth of flavour.

We didn't get any desserts because we were too stuffed.

Service was good, quick and efficient and we didn't have to wait long for our food. The final total came to £34 for a set lunch menu, 2 courses off the full menu, 2 beers and a coke. Excellent value

I would quite happily put this place as one of my top places to eat in Leeds simply because the food is epically good.

Ciao Bella, Leeds

2011-04-11T19:40:00.001+01:00

On a pleasant Sunday evening and on the hunt for some food that wasn't a Sunday roast, we wandered down to Brewery Wharf and Ciao Bella on Dock Street.
The restaurant was fairly empty and with it being a nice evening we sat outside. We were given the menus and our drinks order taken.
For my starter I opted for a small portion of one of the pasta dishes; Penne all'Arrabiata - pepperoni garlic, chili in a olive oil and tomato sauce.

This was actually quite good, pasta wasn't over cooked and the sauce was vibrant with plenty of tomatoey garlic flavour alongside a very gentle chili heat.

The main however well that's a different story...

I went for Stincotto d'Agnello - shank of lamb, oven cooked with a roast garlic and savoury cabbage in a red wine reduction served with mashed potatoes.

Now the Lamb itself was nicely cooked and the mash was fairly reasonable, what I had a problem with was the sauce. To put it plainly it was weird. It tasted neither like a red wine reduction or of roast garlic, it had some flavour I cant really describe, a bit like a slightly artificial, slightly sweet flavour, it just didn't taste good. The dish needed a proper red wine sauce preferably with a mountain of rosemary. The cabbage was not good either, slightly overcooked and contributed nothing to the overall dish, a slightly steamed savoy cabbage with its vibrant green would have been a much better choice and added a much needed dimension to the dish.

Service was not brilliant either, it was friendly and if the restaurant was busy we wouldn't have minded the speed of the service because it was very slow but like I said before the restaurant was fairly empty.

On a brighter note, the Italian craft beer, Gradisca, they had on was very nice. Hoppy, refreshing and lovely on a warm spring evening.

Ciao Bella
20 Dock Street,
Leeds.
0113 2469444

The Spice Club, Manchester

2011-03-27T13:30:00.001+01:00

The Spice Club. Held in a distant corner of Manchester, is an underground supper club hosted by Monica in her beautiful home assisted by her lovely family.

This supper club, as you may have guessed, specialises in authentic home cooked Indian food and consists of a 3 course meal with coffee for £20 of which 10% goes to charity. Alcohol is not served but they have a BYOB policy.

We were warmly greeted and shown to the beautiful dining room after wandering the streets for a while trying to decide which door to knock on, fortunately the first one was the right one (ah the joys of underground restaurants and secret locations).

We met our fellow diners for the evening. It was quite a diverse bunch sat round the table with many professions present including teachers and teachers and erm...teachers, there was also a nurse and an estate agent with dreams of ice road trucking to stop most of the evening being spent discussing school.

First up, food wise was the appetiser. Jaipuri Stuffed Bread rolls. These were stuffed with potato and peas and flavoured with herbs and spices. These were delicious, light and tasty with a subtle blend of complimenting herbs and spices.

Next up was the mains and by mains I mean enough food to feed an army with leftovers. The entire centre of the table was filled with dishes and plates of delicious aromatic food, delivered with the simple instruction to tuck in, alongside a constant supply of basmati rice and chappatis. The dishes that we had the pleasure of eating were:

Kashmiri Lamb Masala
Succulent lamb slow roasted in a rich masala sauce, seasoned with home-made Punjabi garam masala &
an array of fragrant spices
Shahi Chicken
Slow roasted chicken marinated in cream, blended with cashews, almonds & Punjabi spices.

Channa Masala
Chick peas cooked in fresh ginger, tomato & coriander

SaagAloo
Potatoes cooked in a spicy fresh spinach masala

Bhindi
Fresh okra stuffed with paneer seasoned with sea salt, paprika, turmeric & coriander
Raita
Cucumber & red onion mixed with yogurt,
flavoured with roasted cumin& sea salt

All the dishes squished onto one plate.

Dishes that I was particular impressed with were the Lamb dish and the okra dish. Having never been a fan of okra I can now safely say that I am a convert as long as it is cooked like this every time.

All the food just shone with authenticity that most Indian restaurants struggle to create. Delicious food with spice blends that have been perfected over many years, absolutely superb. Many thanks also for the chapatti masterclass I received, I was very surprised to see how simple they are to create and will be having a go at making my own in future.

Dessert was Gajr Halwa, a warm sweet Indian carrot pudding served with ice cream followed by Masala Coffee and a homemade cardamom shortbread biscuit, a lovely end to the meal.

Thanks again to Monica and her family for their excellent food and hospitality.

Book yourself in for a future date at : The Spice Club

Sausage Casserole

2011-03-22T21:11:00.000Z

Simple filling dish, rammed with flavour and of course all with a gentle chilli heat.

Sausage Casserole
Ingredients
1 Tbsp oil
6 good quality Pork Sausages
4 Rashers of streaky bacon (1 inch pieces)
1 Onion (finely sliced)
Clove of garlic
1/2 Tsp of Hot Chili Powder or @JoolsCyprien's Firepowder if you are lucky enough to have some.
400g can of chopped tomatoes
300ml chicken or vegetable stock
2 Tbsp Tomato puree
1 Tbsp Henderson's Relish (or Worcestershire sauce)
1 Tbsp dark sugar
Lots of Fresh Rosemary/Thyme (to taste)
100ml Red Wine
400g Can of Kidney beans
Salt and Pepper to season.

Fry the sausages in the oil until browned all over, remove from frying pan and place in a large saucepan

Fry bacon in the frying pan until crispy, remove from frying pan and place in the saucepan

Fry the onion in the frying pan until soft, add the garlic and fry until golden.
Add the chili powder and fry for a bit longer.

Add the tomatoes, puree, stock, Hendersons, sugar, wine and herbage into the frying pan. Bring to a simmer

Transfer into the saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the kidney beans and simmer for a further 10 minutes. Season to taste

Serve on its own or with crusty bread, jackets, mash, rice, wedges. Its up to you.

Enjoy

Wig & Pen, Sheffield

2011-03-20T17:05:00.001Z

The Wig & Pen is the second restaurant from the owners of the Milestone, the Sheffield restaurant that narrowly missed out on the final of Ramsay's Best Restaurant.
Located on Campo Lane, this bustling Gastro Pub promises to stick to the Milestone ethos of serving fresh, local seasonal food from local suppliers so one Saturday evening we booked a table and went along to check it out.

We were shown to our table and given the menus to browse, being a Gastro pub a couple of Sheffield ales were on the bar which I happily went for.

We did plan on going for the excellent value 3 course pre theatre menu for £15 but the rather tempting sounding full menu drew us in and we went for that instead.

We started off with a plate of Olives and freshly made bread while deciding what we wanted.

I opted for the Pan Cooked Duck Heart with scallop, white onion puree and chorizo oil. the duck heart was a very pleasant experience, very tender with a subtle delicate meaty flavour perfectly accompanied by the creamy scallop.

For my main I went for the Wig and Pen mixed grill: Lamb cutlet with chicken mousse, home dried tomatoes, small fries, black pudding fritter, homemade sausage wrapped in leek, home cured bacon and mushrooms in a herb crust. this was a superb take on the traditional mixed grill whilst celebrating quality produce, I can't actually decide which bit I liked best.

For dessert i went for the Rhubarb and vanilla custard mousse, shortbread, rhubarb syrup, confit of rhubarb and rhubarb foam. This was very tasty and light, a delicious variety of rhubarb textures and flavours and an excellent demonstration of how one ingredient can be used in may ways.

Service was excellent, efficient, speedy and friendly.

Final bill came to £80 for two consisting 4 courses, drinks, and coffee.

Rutland Arms, Sheffield

2011-03-19T17:16:00.000Z

Having been in Sheffield since August it took me a good few months to finally visit the Rutland Arms despite walking past it many times to get home but hey we learn from our mistakes.

Located near the Showroom cinema, the Rutland arms is a cosy little pub decorated in traditional style with an excellent selection of real ales usually from the local breweries of Sheffield and Yorkshire. I recently sampled Moonbeam from the Blue Bee Brewery, a deliciously hoppy pale ale from Sheffield's newest brewery.

While wasting away a Sunday afternoon in both the Sheffield tap and the Rutland arms, we decided to try out the food. The food has an excellent reputation, freshly cooked with quality ingredients so we were expecting good things and we weren't disappointed.

We opted for the Rutland burger and the Bhaji butty, a naan bread stuffed with onion bhaji, chips and curry sauce. They also do a roast menu on Sundays as well as the usual menu.

My burger was very good, thick juicy and slightly pink in the middle and the chips were epic as you can see from the picture. The picture of the Bhaji butty doesn't really do it justice, as we opened it up to get a picture but I can assure you it was very tasty.
Superb pub grub and excellent value with both meals costing just over a tenner

Well worth a visit and only 2 minutes walk from the rail station so perfect for a pre journey beer.

Scales, Spons and Horses

2011-03-19T16:10:00.001Z

A month or so ago, the Bakelady over at http://bakelady.wordpress.com told us about a comment she wrote on another blog post talking about how they had received free chocolates from a website called Appliances online for commenting on another blog post of a person who had also received something and so on. From this comment the Bakelady was the lucky recipient of a set of cake tins simply for commenting on a blog.

So following the trend, she wrote about it on her blog, 'when it pays to never look a gift horse in the mouth' and invited people to comment on what they would like.

What my kitchen desperately needed was a decent set of scales, preferably electronic because it is just not fun balancing a large bowl (the original measuring bowl was lost) on top of a tiny set of mechanical scales and trying to measure out ingredients without the bowl crashing to the floor.

A few weeks later and having thought no more about it, I received a pleasant email from Ian at Appliances Online about my comment and they offered me a set of electronic scales which I duly accepted.

The twitter conversation about the original post was also noticed by Neal Robertson, the inventor of the Spon who also offered us both a set of Spons to try out and which have proved very useful especially for pancake batter recently.

So now I invite you to comment on this post about what you want or need in your kitchen and you never know you might be the lucky recipient of a gift.

Many thanks to Neal and Ian for their useful additions to my kitchen.

Lemon Cake

2011-03-19T15:21:00.001Z

For this months Clandestine Cake Club meeting I didn't have much time to experiment and play about and create a new cake but I also didn't want to turn up without one, so having bought Raymond Blanc's new book I decided to make his tasty looking lemon cake...

Lemon Cake
Ingredients
5 Eggs
300g Caster Sugar
140ml Double Cream
Zest of 3 lemons
Pinch of salt
25ml dark rum
80g butter, melted
240g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

For the glaze
50g apricot jam
Zest of 1 lemon
3 Tbsp lemon juice
150g icing sugar

Method
Line and grease a loaf tin and preheat oven to 180C
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, cream, lemon zest, rum, salt and melted butter.

Sift in the flour and baking powder then whisk into the egg mixture until smooth.

Spoon or pour the mixture into the loaf tin and gently level the surface.

Bake for 50 mins -1 hour, test to see if it is cooked by inserting a skewer or a knife into the centre, if its clean when removed its done.
Remove from tin immediately and cool for 10 mins on a wire rack.

Warm the jam slightly and brush all over the cake, leave for 5 minutes
Mix lemon zest, icing sugar and juice into a pan and gently heat to 35C until smooth.

Brush evenly over the cake and leave for a couple of minutes to set.
Place the cake on a baking tray and place back in the oven, switch the oven off, and leave the cake for 3-5 minutes, this makes the glaze translucent.
Allow to cool and serve.

Enjoy.

Sunshine Bakery, Leeds

2011-02-25T01:33:00.003Z

Chapel Allerton, just outside of Leeds, seems like quite a nice place to live. They have an excellent Mexican restaurant, an Indian home delivery service that delivers authentic Indian food and they have the Sunshine Bakery...

On what turned out to be a tour of everywhere we like (foodwise) in Leeds. Sunshine Bakery was our first stop. The last time we went it only had one table, this time it had managed to squish a few more in to accommodate its evening supper club.
It is decorated in a quaint tearoom style with food and drink served on mismatched china, basically this place defines cosy and intimate. Our initial intention was to get some of the bakery's epic cupcakes but seeing that they now had a delicious sounding lunch menu we decided to stay and make a meal of it.

We opted for the Sunshine Beefburger (me) and the Pork belly and sausage meat sandwich (Other Half), both came on the bakery's homemade tomato and pesto bread with salad. The burger, which came with bacon and cheese, was very juicy, slightly pink in the middle and very flavoursome.

For dessert we (naturally) got cupcakes. Sunshine Bakery cupcakes are quite special, lighter than air sponge with masses of various toppings ranging from peanut butter, double chocolate, strawberry and mango, Eton mess plus Britians Best Cupcake 2010 - Mango and Banana.
Cupcakes usually are sickly sweet things usually sacrificing flavour for extravagant decoration, these cupcakes avoid this. They are full of flavour but still remain quite light allowing for more than one to be eaten at a time without that sickly feeling afterwards.

The final bill for two sandwiches, two cupcakes, tea, coffee, a pot of chai tea plus two of the tomato/pesto teacakes (it's a teacake not a barm or a bap or a bread cake, deal with it and move on) another cupcake and a large brownie to takeaway came to £24. An absolute bargain.

If you live in Leeds or the surrounding areas, go for a visit if you haven't already.

Sticky Honey and Lemon Chicken

2011-02-24T21:38:00.000Z

This a recipe from Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers. It looked good and thats usually enough of a reason for me...

Sticky Honey and Lemon Chicken
Ingredients
3 Chicken Thighs (skin and bone on)
Juice of one Lemon
2 Cloves of Garlic (crushed)
1-2 Tbsp Honey
1-2 Tbsp Grain Mustard
1 Tbsp Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Mix the lemon juice, garlic, pepper, honey and mustard in a bowl.
Add the chicken to the mix andensure it is well coated.
Leave for a few hours/overnight to marinate. shake the mix up every so often.

Preheat the oven to 200C.
Place the thighs on a roasting tin and pour over the rest of the marinade

Cook for 40 minutes, turn half way through to ensure its well coated.
Remove from the oven and serve.

Eat and enjoy, prize for person who gets the messiest.

Verdict: sticky, soft chicken and a deliciously messy plate of food, also easy to alter according to preference, more lemon, less honey etc..

Vanilla Rose Cake

2011-02-24T19:31:00.001Z

Here we have a guest recipe from the person regular readers would know as the Other Half. This was her cake for this months Clandestine Cake meeting.

Vanilla Sponge Cake

Ingredients
225g unsalted butter, at room temp.
225g caster sugar.
210g self raising flour, sifted.
25g cornflour.
1 tsp baking powder
4 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract.
3 tbsps semi-skimmed milk, at room temp.

Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees, line a cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until the mixture is pale and smooth, this should take 3 - 5 minutes.
Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Add the eggs to the creamed mixture, one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition, alternating with the dry ingredients, and finally add the vanilla extract and the milk.
Beat well after each addition but do not over beat.
Bake in the oven for 45 minutes until raised and golden brown.
Insert a skewer in the centre, it will come out clean if cooked.
Once they are cool decorate with buttercream icing.

Buttercream icing

Ingredients
115g unsalted butter, at room temp.
4 tbsp semi skimmed milk, at room temp.
1 tsp vanilla extract.
500g icing sugar, sifted.
Pink food colouring.

Method
In large mixing bowl beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract and half the icing sugar until smooth using an electric hand mixer.
Gradually add the remainder of the icing sugar and beat again until the buttercream is smooth and creamy.
To colour, simply beat in a tiny drop of pink food colouring.

Rose petals

Ingredient
1egg White
Enough roses petals as required

Method
Take the egg whites and whisk lightly to break them up.
Pull apart petals from a pesticide-free (organic) rose. Choose petals free of blemishes or bend marks.
With a small, fine brush, take a little bit of the egg white mixture and evenly apply over the entire surface of the petal, starting from the centre out.
Sprinkle sugar evenly over the petal and place on drying racks until completely dried. They will be hard. If the petals are small and if the drying racks are spaced too far apart, place on paper towels to dry.
When finished, transfer to an airtight container until used. Properly stored, they should keep for a couple of weeks.

Plumed Horse, Edinburgh

2011-02-24T19:19:00.005Z

The Plumed Horse is a one star Michelin restaurant located on Leith Docks, Edinburgh. The restaurant is at the top of the street that is referred to as the Michelin Mile consisting of the Plumed Horse, Restaurant Martin Wishart and The Kitchin.

The restaurant itself is very cosy with a max of about 20 tables on two levels. We were warmly greeted and our jackets taken but we were however 20 minutes early (makes a change for us), the restaurant were very accommodating and informed us that it wouldn't be a problem but there would be a small delay in taking our order, which we were fine with. We were shown to our seats and given the menus to browse and very delicious canapes to enjoy.

We each opted for the 6 course tasting menu with coffee and petit fours at £65 per head.

Veloute of Cauliflower, Quail Egg, Chives

Sauteed Fillet of Sea Bream, Hand Dived Scallop, Chickpea, Smoked Haddock & Crab Casserole, Saffron & Mild Curry Spices

Terrine of Woodpigeon & Foie Gras and Thyme Brioche.

Loin of Venision, Clapshot, Shallot puree, Duchesse Potato and venison jus.

This was the pre dessert and was like a little lemon meringue in a glass

Honey & Clotted Cream Parfait, Mulled Wine Poached Plums

Petit Fours

As you can see from the pictures, all the food was beautiful and it tasted beautiful as well. I could talk about each dish but I don't want to bore you so I'll just do highlights. My personal favourite was the loin of venison, it was cooked to perfection, soft and juicy and I could have literally eaten that over and over. The richest dish was the fois gras and wood pigeon, this was the third course and as divine as it was especially with the beautiful brioche, I was glad there was a break between that course and the main because I was struggling after it. The fish dish was also superb, the soft sea bream combined with creaminess of scallop went very well with the delicate curry flavours of the sauce.

Service was excellent, informative, friendly and not overbearing. The restaurant does not turn its tables allowing for very calm and unrushed service. The meal overall including the coffee took a good 3 hours which just breezed by.

Overall, excellent value for a Michelin tasting menu, the experience and service received. It stands up well next to its more well known neighbours.

50-54 Henderson St
Edinburgh, Midlothian EH6 6DE
0131 554 5556

Chocolate, Honeycomb and Truffle Cake

2011-02-13T18:08:00.002Z

It took me awhile to think up an idea for this months Clandestine Cake Club, then I got an idea and then another one and another one after that, therefore I decided to combine them. So I give you Chocolate, Honeycomb and Truffle cake......

Chocolate, Honeycomb and Truffle cake
The sponge
Ingredients
16oz self raising flour
16oz Butter
16oz Caster Sugar
8 Eggs
3tbsp cocoa Powder

Method
First, weigh out the flour and then remove 3tbsps. replace with 3 tbsp of cocoa powder.
Stick everything else in the bowl and whisk until all combined.
Divide between two lined cake tins and bake in a preheated oven (190C) for about 45 minutes, check its done by inserting a skewer into the centre of the cake, if its clean on removal its done.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Honeycomb
Ingredients
80g Butter
160g Caster Sugar
80g Golden Syrup
2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

Melt all ingredients gently in a pan and then slowly boil.
Boil gently until mixture turns a golden honeycomb colour, if it starts to colour quicker on one side then give the mixture a swirl, don't stir.
Once a golden colour as been achieved (about 5 minutes of boiling), tip in the Bicarbonate of Soda and stir in gently, it should expand in the pan.
Tip into a greased tray and leave to cool and chill for a few hours until solid.

Whisky and Spiced Rum Truffles
Blog Post coming soon

Chocolate topping
300g Dark Chocolate
300g Double Cream

Over a pan of simmering water, Melt the chocolate in a bowl
Once melted remove from the heat and pour in the cream, stir until combined and smooth and glossy.

Assembly
Make sure the cake is level when they are sat on top of each other, if not then slice of the offending area until they are both level.

Grind the honeycomb, use any method you like such as
food processor or beating it with a rolling pin.

Take 3-4 tbsp of the chocolate topping and mix in some ground honeycomb, use this for the middle filling.

Sandwich together and drown the cake with the remainder of the chocolate topping. smooth it round so it is completely covered.

Sprinkle the ground honeycomb across the top and place the truffles in a nice pattern on top.

Enjoy

(more pictures of the processes will be coming soon)

Clandestine Cake Club - Sweet Valentine

2011-02-13T17:33:00.000Z

The sequel to Cake Cornucopia. this time held in the location of the Secret Tea Room due to a cancellation of the previous venue.

The theme this time was Sweet Valentine - show your love and affection for baking with delicious sweet decorations and flavours, over the top hearts and flowers

Me and my fellow bakers responded to this brilliantly with over the space of an hour cake after cake kept arriving each as delicious looking as the last, the amount of sugar eventually putting a fellow guest to sleep amidst the chatter afterwards.

Many thanks to our hostess for opening her home to accommodate us all.

I think that's enough from me, I'll let the cakes do the talking.....

My Chocolate, Truffle and Honeycomb cake

Lynn's Lemon and Lime Cake

Karoline's Kentish Chocolate Cake

Helen's Lemon Merigune Cake

Mikes Spiced apple and beetroot

Clair's Vanilla Rose Cake

Eleanor's Blueberry Cake

Lucy's Chocolate and ginger cake

Steph's Chocolate and Raspberry

Georgiana's Cherry and Almond birthday cake

Jealous yet? Come along to the next one then.

Selkirk Bannock

2011-02-06T18:39:00.000Z

I spotted this recipe in this month edition of Good Food. It seemed simple to do and looked good. The article next to the recipe stated that it was apparently Queen Victoria's favourite, well if it is good enough for her.....

Selkirk Bannock
Ingredients
7g Sachet of Dried Yeast
1tsp Caster sugar
250ml Warm water
500g Strong White Flour
70g Lard/70g Butter (or use all butter) - melted and cooled
450g Sultanas
50g Light Brown Sugar
Milk for glazing

Method
Mix the yeast, caster sugar and water together in a large bowl, leave for 10 minutes until it starts frothing.

Tip in the flour and 125g of the Lard/Butter and mix together to form a soft dough.

Knead for 5 minutes then place back into the bowl, cover with oiled clingfilm and leave to rise until doubled in size.

Knock back the dough by kneading for a minute or two.
Add the sultanas and brown sugar and knead in well.

Shape into a round and place in a 23cm deep cake tin that has been greased with the remainder of the butter.

Leave again to rise for 30 minutes or until doubled.
Brush with the milk and place into a preheated oven (160C Fan/180C if not)
Bake for 50 minutes until risen and browned
If it starts to colour earlier and still requires cooking, then cover for 10 minutes with foil.
To check if it is cooked, the bottom of the bannock should sound hollow when tapped.
When completely cooked, remove from oven and eave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then remove and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Serve toasted or warmed with plenty of butter and a cup of tea.

Enjoy.

Shortbread

2011-02-06T18:15:00.001Z

A recipe so simple, quick and delicious, it makes you wonder why people actually buy this stuff in shops.

Shortbread
Ingredients
300g Plain Flour
300g Butter
75g Caster Sugar (plus a bit extra for dusting)

Method
Beat the butter with sugar, with an electric whisk until light and fluffy.
Tip in the flour and beat together until it is crumbly.
Use your hands and bring everything together to a sticky dough.
Press into a greased 27in tart tin and smooth round with the back of a spoon.
Bake in a preheated oven (160C fan assisted, 180C if not) for about 30 minutes or until golden.
Remove from oven.
While warm and still in the tin, cut into wedges and dust with caster sugar.
Leave to cool completely in the tin.

Stick the kettle on and enjoy.

Chicken and Papaya Curry

2011-02-04T21:19:00.000Z

As well as writing my own, I like to read other people's blogs particularly food blogs. A particular favourite of mine is Belleau Kitchen written by a guy called Dom.

Recently he posted a recipe challenge in which participants had to pick at random a recipe book they owned. From this choice they had to flick through the book and stop at a random recipe and then cook that recipe regardless of what it is and without cheating and changing to a more preferred recipe.

The book I ended up picking was Gordon Ramsay's Great Escape and the recipe that I landed on was Chicken and Papaya Curry.

This would normally be a recipe I would probably glance at and that would be it, with it not being my usual preference in terms of food and curry. That, however, would be against the spirit of the challenge so here goes.....

Chicken and Papaya Curry (serves 4)
Ingredients
500g Chicken thighs (skinned and boneless)
1 tsp Ground Turmeric
1 tbsp Oil
2 Medium Onions (finely chopped)
3cm Fresh Ginger (peeled and grated)
3 cloves of Garlic
1 Green Chili (deseeded and finely chopped)
150ml Water
6 Tbsp Raw Green Papaya (finely chopped or pureed in a food processor)
Juice of one Lime
Coriander to garnish

Method

Cut the chicken thighs into bite sized pieces and mix with seasoning and the turmeric
Heat the oil in a wide frying pan and add the onions, garlic, chilli and ginger.

Fry for 5 minutes until the onions start to soften.
Add the chicken and mix well.
Fry over a high heat for a few minutes then add the water and the papaya.

Reduce heat to a simmer.
Cook for 20 minutes until chicken is tender and the sauce thickens.

Add the lime juice and season to taste.
Transfer to a warm serving bowl and garnish with fresh coriander.

Verdict: Very impressed. Very light and fragrant with each distinct flavour getting a chance to show off and with a lovely undertone of heat from the chilli. I will definitely be making this again and probably using this method to pick meals again because I wouldn't have made this otherwise.

PIN, Leeds

2011-01-30T18:20:00.001Z

PIN is a new little bar on Dock Street just off Brewery Wharf. PIN is part of the Leeds Brewery empire which includes; Midnight Bell, Brewery Tap and the recent acquisition of Garden Gate.

PIN by their own definition is a contemporary cafe bar, nicely designed with an entire wall of mirrors which gives the impression that its larger than it actually is. It is quite a cosy place with a mixture of tables and sofas.

After seeing several great reviews about the quality of the food, we wandered along on a Monday lunchtime to check it out.
The place was quiet as you would expect on a Monday lunchtime and we warmly greeted with menus and asked if we would like a drink. I opted for Leeds Best out of the two hand pumps on the bar, the other was Leeds Pale. I hope they put another pump on with Midnight Bell or the latest Leeds Brewery seasonal.
For food I went for the classic PIN Burger which had been declared the best burger in Leeds by several people, the Other Half went for a Stilton and Mushroom Pie.

The burger didn't disappoint. A huge meaty, herby, well seasoned, slightly pink burger served with glorious homemade chips, salad and a lovely jalapeno relish which added just the right level of heat to the burger, all washed down with a well kept ale.

The final bill for two came to £24 (with drinks), good value for the quality of the food served.

Highly recommend a visit

Oreo Brownies

2011-01-26T19:11:00.002Z

This recipe was recently on Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale so I thought I would give it a go.

Oreo Brownies

Ingredients
165g Butter
200g Dark Chocolate (Grated)
3 Eggs
2 Egg yolks
2 tsp Vanilla Extract (or the seeds of one pod)
165g Soft light brown sugar
2 Tbsp Plain Flour
1 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
Pinch of Salt
154g pack of Oreos (or use another chocolate biscuit if you are not keen on Oreos)

Method
Preheat oven to 180C and grease and line a 20cm square baking tin.
Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat
When melted remove from heat and tip in grated chocolate.
Leave for a minute or two then stir together
Whisk eggs, egg yolks and vanilla together until eggs are light and fluffy.
Add the sugar in two additions, whisk between each addition, pour it in the side of the bowl to avoid knocking the air out.
Whisk until the mixture becomes stiffer.
Pour the chocolate in, again round the sides.
Add flour, cocoa and salt and fold in.
Fold in about 3/4s of the packet of Oreos, broken up.
Pour in the lined tin and break up the remaining biscuits and spread around the top.
Cook for about 25-30 minutes, the middle should be gooey.
Leave to cool in the tin.
Remove from the tin and cut up and enjoy.

Just out of oven

Just before oven

Verdict: oh so very very very very good.....did I say how good they are?

Pan-Fried Mackerel with Rocket and Potato Gratin.

2011-01-24T21:12:00.003Z

With Hugh's Fish Fight (if you don't know what this is then go here, read about it and sign up) singing the praises of fish such as the Mackerel, I decided to have a go at cooking it, so I headed to Leeds Market and the impressive range of Fishmongers to get hold of some. I picked up two huge fillets (filleted there and then) and the head and bones for the bargain price of £2.80. I did plan on making fish stock with the remains but researching recipes for fish stock all stated not to use mackerel due to being to oily.

Being the first time I had cooked this fish I decided to keep it simple and not do anything extravagant which would detract from the flavour of the fish itself.

Pan-Fried Mackerel with Rocket and Potato Gratin

1 Mackerel Fillet
1 Tbsp of olive oil
Knob of butter

Gratin (makes two portions)
2 Large potatoes
150ml Double cream
1 small onion or several shallots
1/2tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/2 tsp Nutmeg (grated or ground)
50g Butter

Rocket Leaves

Method
For the gratin
Slice the potatoes into thin slices, place into a pan of water and bring to the boil, Drain and set aside.
Melt 3/4 of the butter in a pan and add the onion and cook gently until soft and sticky.
Pour in the cream, pepper and nutmeg and bring to the boil then remove from the heat.

Grease an oven proof individual pie dish with the remaining butter and layer the potatoes and the cream, make sure the top layer of potatoes is completely covered by the cream.
Bake for about 20 mins until golden on top (180-200C)

For the fish
Heat the oil in a pan until searing hot.
Season both sides of the fish with black pepper and salt.
Place in the pan, skin side down and hold down gently to stop the fish curling upwards.
Once the skin is crisp (about 1-2 minutes) add the butter to the pan and turn over and repeat on the other side.

Place on the bed of Rocket and pour over the juices left in the pan.

Bellissimo!

Edinburgh Bars and Pubs

2011-01-24T18:51:00.000Z

On our visit to the Scottish capital we (naturally) visited some quality bars and pubs that the city had to offer. Below are a selection of my favourites.

Pubs

Bow Bar
My favourite pub in Edinburgh. A small old fashioned pub with old style signs and pictures on the walls. It has about 5 ales on at any one time but its real selling point is its massive collection of malt whiskys with over 200, most of which are on display behind the bar.

Guildford Arms
The first pub we went to on our arrival. A rather nice pub with about 8 ales on at one time usually from Scottish brewers. Styled in a traditional Victorian theme with wooden beams and intricate decorations on the walls and ceilings. It has an excellent atmosphere of an evening time.

Cafe Royal
Situated next to the Guildford Arms, Cafe Royal is a combination of a pub and a restaurant. The main drinking area is the circle bar a stunning room designed with stained glass windows, muriels, mirrors and wood panellings. A good place for a drink.

Jolly Judge
After wandering around the castle for a few hours a beer was needed, so we wandered down the royal mile looking for somewhere new. The Jolly Judge is located down a little alley in between a couple of touristy shops. It is a very cosy pub with a large fire and a good selection of beers. Brew Dog's Alpha dog was on when we visited.

Bars

99 Hanover Street
A lovely cocktail bar that was round the corner from our hotel. what impressed me with this place was the care that went into making each drink. The drinks took awhile to reach us after ordering but they were superb and reasonably priced for a city centre cocktail bar.

Under The Stairs
This as the name suggest is an underground bar with an entrance that would put most off but inside was a lovely cosy bar with table service and some of the nicest grazing cheese and meat platters I have seen.

Hard Rock
It's touristy, It's cheesy but I like it. Nuff sed.

Heather Honey Scones

2011-01-23T13:18:00.000Z

Inspired by my recent visit to the the Balmoral Hotel and with the the Bakelady running a scone challenge, I decided to make some Honey Scones using a lovely pot of Heather honey I picked up in Edinburgh. Most supermarkets should have some form of heather honey or other different types such as blossom, acacia etc... and I emplore you to buy a decent pot for this recipe just for the superior flavour, or instead of using a supermarket, find and support your local supplier. For those of you living in Sheffield the Sheffield Honey Company is the local producer but I'm sure there is one near where you live.

This recipe is really simple and can be quickly made in about 30 minutes.

Heather Honey Scones (makes 8)
225g Self Raising Flour
1/2 tsp Salt
50g Butter
7 Tbsp Milk
1 Tbsp Honey (warmed slightly)

Method
Rub the Flour and salt together with the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Add the milk and the honey to the mix and bring together, using a knife, until a soft but not sticky dough is formed.
Knead together quickly to make a smooth dough.
At this point either roll out with a rolling pin, (to about 1cm thick) and use a cutter or do what I do and rip bits of the dough and mould into a scone shape using your hands, I like the scruffy and non uniform look it gives to the scone.
Place on a greased baking tray and brush with milk.
Place in a preheated oven at 230C for 10 minutes.

Serve with jam and clotted cream, if anybody uses squirty cream I will hunt you down and confiscate the remainder of your scones.

Enjoy.

Afternoon Tea at the Balmoral, Edinburgh

2011-01-20T21:18:00.000Z

For the Other Half's birthday (which was in October) one of her presents was Afternoon Tea at the Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh and because I'm nice I splashed out on the Champagne Afternoon Tea.
Afternoon tea at the Balmoral is served in the hotel's Bollinger bar, a rather nice champagne bar (as the name suggests) with its own harpist who plays from an overhead balcony.

We were warmly greeted upon arrival and our coats were taken to be hung up, we were given the menus to look through containing a quite extensive tea menu of which I opted for a Silver Needle white tea, a very delicately flavoured and fragrant tea. First to arrive on the table was little circles of shortbread followed by a quite impressive tower of sandwiches, scones and patisserie.

Sandwiches
Fresh Salmon and cucumber
Honey roast ham
Egg mayonnaise and pepper
Tomato, basil and brie
Beef and red onion marmalade

Scones
Fruit, Heather honey and cinnamon scones served with jam and clotted cream

Patisserie
Blueberry cheesecake
Mini Bakewell tart
Sponge cake
Tiffin

All the food was superb and there was plenty of it as well with both of us very full and sleepy afterwards, my personal favourite was the Tiffin and the heather honey scones which I plan to make at some point. Service as you would expect was excellent, the Other Half couldn't manage to eat all her scones and requested to take them home, this request was willingly met and the takeaway box was topped up with more shortbread, a lovely touch.

Excellent food and service, a lovely extravagant way to spend an afternoon.

Chocolate Chili Cake

2011-01-09T22:20:00.001Z

Having never had the opportunity to sample a chocolate chili cake and being in a chocolaty mood, I decided to give it a go.

Chocolate Chili Cake
Ingredients
250g Butter
300g Light Muscavado Sugar
100g Plain Flour
100g Self Raising Flour
4 Eggs
300g Dark Chocolate
2 - 4 Red Chili's

Topping
200g Dark Chocolate
200g Double Cream

Method
Preheat the oven to 160C
Line a 20cm cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs a bit at a time, add a bit of flour if mix starts to split.
Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, leave to cool.
Once cool add chocolate to the mixture.
Fold in the flour to the mixture.
Chop chili's finely or crush into a paste and add to the mixture.
Spoon into the cake tin and bake for about 1.5 hours and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Leave to cool on a wire rack.

To Decorate
Use a bread knife to cut the cake horizontally in half.
Melt the chocolate in the same way as above, remove from heat and stir in the cream until smooth and glossy.

Spoon about a quarter of the choc/cream onto one half of the cake and sandwich the halves together.
Spoon the rest of the choc/cream over the top and spread across and down the sides of the cake.

Serve with a brew

Verdict: Squidgy, rich, chocolaty with a little chili heat, Lovely.

Enjoy

Beef Wellington

2010-12-30T13:37:00.001Z

This recipe was used on Ramsay's F word programme and I had been planning on attempting it for awhile so when better than Christmas day.

The amount of ingredients for this depends on how many you are serving (obviously). A 1.4kg piece of beef was more than sufficient for 6, however making a wellington of this size is one hell of a battle so I advise you make two smaller ones of about 600g each

Beef Wellington

Ingredients

600g Beef Fillet

400g Chestnut Mushrooms

100g Cooked Chestnuts

6 Slices of Parma Ham

English Mustard

500g packet of Puff Pastry

2 egg yolks

Method

Season the beef well with Salt and Pepper.

Heat a frying pan with plenty of oil until very very hot.

Sear the beef quickly on all sides to seal in the juices, do not cook the beef just colour.

Brush with plenty of mustard and leave to rest and cool on a plate.

Blend the mushrooms and chestnuts in a food processor.

Place them in a hot dry pan in order to remove all the water, this may take some time but is critical to the recipe. The mixture should be sticking together and no bubbling water should be seen.

Leave to cool

Roll out a long length of clingfilm and overlap the Parma ham in the middle.

Spoon out the mushrooms and spread over the ham, leave a bout an inch from all sides.

Place the beef in the centre.

Using the clingfilm roll up the ham, mushrooms and beef very tightly and twist the clingfilm at the ends as much as possible.

Leave to set for 20 minutes in the fridge.

Roll out the pastry and place on a long piece of clingfilm.

Place beef on the pastry and roll up, trim off the excess pastry and tighten up with the clingfilm, twisting tightly at the ends.

Leave to rest in the fridge for an hour. You can also leave it at this stage overnight in the fridge just remove a few hours before cooking so the beef can return to room temperature for cooking.

Brush the Wellington with egg wash and bake in a preheated oven (190C) for 45 minutes, depending on how you like your meat, (use a meat thermometer for a bit more guidance)

Enjoy

Baileys Cheesecake

2010-12-30T12:44:00.000Z

This was my alternative choice to Christmas pudding, (not that I have anything against Christmas pudding). This recipe is very very easy, requires no cooking and can be made days in advance of whatever you need it for.

Baileys Cheesecake
Ingredients
100g Butter
250g Digestive Biscuits
600g Philadelphia cream cheese
25ml Baileys
100g Icing Sugar
300ml Double Cream
100g Grated Chocolate

(If you are a coffee fan, add 10-25ml of Kahlua or Tia Maria with the Baileys)

Method
Crush digestives and melt the butter in a pan.
Add the digestives and mix until all the butter has been absorbed.
Spoon and flatten into a lined 18 inch springform tin.
Leave to set in the fridge for about an hour
Lightly whip the cream cheese and beat in the icing sugar and Baileys
Fold in the whipped cream and chocolate.
When smooth, spoon evenly onto the biscuits
Leave to set for a minimum of 3 hours.

Decorate with a bit more grated chocolate or go nuts and be extravagant, up to you.

Recipe from BBC Food

Honey Glazed Ham

2010-12-24T14:01:00.000Z

There is nothing better than a proper honey glazed ham so here is my recipe, altered slightly from Ramsay's.

Ingredients
1 Gammon
Small handful of cloves
Cinnamon Stick (crush slightly)
Onion (quartered, leave the peel on)
Black Peppercorns (crushed)

Glaze
75ml Sherry
100g Dark Brown Sugar
100g Honey

Stick the Gammon in a large pan with the Peppercorns, Onion, Cloves and Cinnamon Stick and enough water to cover it completely. Boil for an hour for each kilogram of Gammon you have e.g. 2kg = 2 Hours.
Keep the water topped up and scoop off the foam on the top every so often.

20 minutes before the boiling time is complete, add the sherry, sugar and honey to a pan and bring to the boil, constantly stirring, lower the heat and simmer for a couple of minutes until you have a glossy syrup. Do not leave unattended or good luck cleaning your hob.

Remove gammon from pan and cut off the string and place into a foiled baking tray, score the fat and stick a clove into each diamond shape.

Pour over the glaze and place into a preheated oven (190C) for about 30 minutes. Every 5 - 10 minutes baste the ham with the glaze in the tray.

Remove from the oven and enjoy once cooled slightly.

Bank Tavern, Keswick

2010-12-23T18:13:00.000Z

Taking a break from Christmas food shopping in Keswick we decided to get a beer and some pub grub to escape the winter chill.
Bank Tavern is located on Main street in Keswick and is a cosy traditional style pub with dark wooden beams and slate floors. It serves a good selection of bar meals alongside the full range of Jennings ales and a couple of guest beers including Wychwood's latest seasonal offering, Bah Humbug.

I ordered the Game casserole consisting of Venison, Wild Boar and Rabbit and made with Jennings Bitter and served with jacket potato and vegetables for the reasonable price of £9. The casserole was very rich and gamey with lovely varying textures of the different meats and went well with the jacket potato (also available with chips and new potatoes). The vegetables were of the frozen variety but the casserole was more than tasty enough to stop me caring.

Is there anything better than having a pub lunch in a cosy pub with good beer while it is in minus figures outside?

The Bank Tavern
45-47 Main St,
Keswick,
Cumbria,
CA12 5DS
017687 72663

*Top image borrowed from http://www.cumberlandtaverns.co.uk

Silversmiths, Sheffield

2010-12-22T17:15:00.003Z

Silversmiths Restaurant is located on Arundel street near the main entrance of Sheffield Hallam University. Launched in 2008, the restaurant prides itself on using 100% Yorkshire suppliers of which 70% are based in Sheffield. The restaurant as also won several awards recently including the White Rose Awards - Best Yorkshire Restaurant and the EatSheffield Awards - Best British Restaurant and Best Local Produce Menu.

I think that is more than enough reasons for a visit so off we went on a wintry evening.

The restaurant is a long room with a well stocked bar along one side, the restaurant is decorated in a modern style with plenty of black red and silver giving it a trendy bar feel.

We were warmly greeted and offered a choice of aperitifs including a nice sounding Winter Pimms cocktail but we opted for a glass of wine instead. we were given the Christmas evening menu to look through.
For my starter i opted for Braised English rabbit with Henderson's red onion reduction on toasted croutons and Roast Rump of Yorkshire beef with hand cut chips, roasted tomatoes and horseradish cream with a side order of carrots for my main.

Rabbit

My starter was really good, having never had rabbit in this form before I was pleasantly surprised by it's deep flavour alongside the tang of the onion reduction. The whole dish was simply presented but full of flavour. My main was equally good, the beef was juicy and tender and my request for chive mashed potatoes instead of chip was willingly met.

Beef

For my dessert I opted for Dark Chocolate and Pear Tart with Champagne and Raspberry Jelly. This was one of the nicest tarts I have tried, incredibly rich with crisp pastry and a layer of pear running through the centre this and the addition of a little shot of champagne jelly made a very pleasing end to the meal.

Chocolate and Pear Tart

In terms of service, Silversmiths is exceptional. very knowledgeable and helpful staff, our jackets were hung up for us as we arrived and brought to our table as we left and I literally cannot find anything of fault in the service we received.

Overall for 3 course meal, wine and coffee for two came to £60, very good value for the level of food and service we received and I will definitely be making a repeat visit.

Silversmiths
111 Arundel Street,
Sheffield,
S1 2NT
0114 270 6160

Milestone Cookbook - First, Catch your Pig

2010-12-18T21:56:00.001Z

To coincide with the release of the Milestone's first cookbook, 'First, catch your pig', me and a couple of other food bloggers responded to the restaurant's Twitter request to try out a couple of recipes.

The Milestone as been going from strength to strength recently, a brilliant run on Ramsay's best restaurant narrowly missing out on the final, a regularly fully booked restaurant, the release of a new cookbook and the opening of the 'Milestone 2' in Paradise Square, Sheffield, of which, I wrote an article about for the Culture Vulture website.

My first recipe was:
Beef Bourguignon - slow cooked ox cheek, herb mashed potato and Bourguignon jus.
I was looking forward to cooking with ox cheek as it would be the first time I had used this ingredient, however after searching several butchers and markets I failed to find any. The restaurant recommended using Skirt steak, Rump steak or beef shin as an alternative.

The recipe was very easy to follow with clear instructions and the resulting dish was very very tasty, beef that was falling apart, creamy, delicious herby mashed potatoes with enough dairy to clog any artery and a deep flavoursome Bourguignon gravy.

Beef Bourgingnon

My second recipe was:
Chocolate and Frangipane cake with figs, red wine syrup and crushed hazelnuts.
I made a couple of errors in the making of this dessert. First, I forgot to check that I had cocoa powder in, which I didn't, so I had to make do with hot chocolate powder, hence why the cake doesn't look particularly chocolaty and the tray I used was quite big, next time a smaller baking tray will be used to make the cake a bit bigger.
Anyway that's the bad stuff out of the way, the cake itself was very good, moist, chocolaty and the almonds and the nuts gave a it a pleasing Ferrero Rocher flavour, the red wine syrup, figs and crushed hazelnuts added several delicious texture and flavour combinations to the overall dish. A very nice dessert indeed.

Chocolate and Frangipane cake

Overall as a fairly good home cook I had little problem with these recipes but working through them, neither should anybody else regardless of ability. They are clear, every stage is covered in detail and if the rest of the recipe book contains dishes as delicious as these, then its well worth splashing out as a treat for yourself or a present for the food lover or budding chef in your family.

The book is available now either from their website or from Amazon, priced at £19.95 for hardback and £16.95 for paperback.

Clandestine Cake Club, Leeds

2010-12-12T11:37:00.002Z

The offspring of the Secret Tea Room. Created by the 'BakeLady' at http://bakelady.wordpress.com/. The CCC is a place in a varying secret location in Leeds, where fellow food lovers and bakers can meet and chat over a cake creation of their choice based on the theme for that particular event.
The inaugural theme was:

Cake Cornucopia (abundance), this can be an abundance of different flavours

and ingredients for your cake, limited only by your imagination.

And quite an abundance of flavours turned up:

Earl Grey
Chocolate Orange and Cointreau
Apple Cider with Cinnamon marscapone cream.
Coffee and Baileys
Pink Champagne
Whisky and Ginger (this was mine, recipe here)
Battenburg

All were very tasty and washed down with plenty of Tea, Coffee and Champagne. A very enjoyable afternoon with home baking and good company. Come along to the next one.

For more information: Clandestine Cake Club

Fancie, Sheffield

2010-12-03T15:26:00.000Z

Victoria Sponge cupcake

With the snow giving me yet another day off (I love this stuff) I set out on another trek to visit Fancie safe in the knowledge that it was open today.

Fancie is a local business based in Sheffield, run by professional pastry chef Amanda Parry, that specialises in cakes and cupcakes. It runs several outlets in Sheffield; at Meadow hall shopping centre, the University and at the Winter Gardens. Their original cafe is based on Sharrow Vale Road about a mile outside the city centre.

The cafe is very cosy and decorated in a retro, old fashioned tea shop style with copious amounts of pink and pastel colours. The main counter is a vintage cabinet displaying the day's freshly baked cupcakes and traybakes.

I was pleasantly greeted as I walked in and the service overall was excellent, very friendly, cheerful and helpful. I ordered an Americano and a Butterscotch cupcake. The coffee was very good and came in a huge mug. The cupcake arrived on a glass cake tray, a very nice touch. The cupcake was brilliantly sweet and tasty (my dentist will not be happy) and the sponge was light and soft, I had intended to try at least two but one was very filling so I took the second home for later.

I recommend hunting down a Fancie cupcake if you are in Sheffield although I hear they are sold at Out of the Woods cafe in Leeds if you cant make it to Sheffield.

Fancie
388 Sharrow Vale Road,
Sheffield,
South Yorkshire,
S11 8ZP
0114 266 7238

Manhattan Coffee House, Sheffield

2010-12-02T17:38:00.001Z

Heading back from my trek around Sheffield in the snow, a warming cup of java was required to hold off the winter chill. Slowly resigning myself to either a chain coffee store or heading home I was pleased to spot this nice little independent place on Eccleshall road.

The place is themed in the usual American coffee shop way with sofas and comfy chairs.

I ordered an Americano from the rather extensive drinks menu of coffees, teas, hot chocolates etc.. and grabbed one of the sofas.
Service was friendly and speedy and the coffee, while being a touch pricey at £2.30 was very nice, not blisteringly hot and very flavoursome.

They also serve a range of sandwiches, jacket spuds and rather nice looking cakes

A nice place to relax with a paper and a good coffee

Roneys Butchers, Sheffield

2010-12-02T17:11:00.000Z

With the snow kindly giving me another day off I decided to wrap up and trek through the arctic wilderness, more commonly known as Sheffield, with my original intention being to visit Fancie's Sharrow Vale Road store, unfortunately it was closed. I did however notice a little butchers on the same road advertising hot roast pork sandwiches and being very peckish I decided to check it out.

Great decision that was, a huge hot juicy pork sandwich with stuffing, apple sauce and crunchy pieces of crackling buried in the centre and all for the bargain price of £2.80. The one you see in the picture is the regular version and was very filling, I assume the large version is a whole pig squished between two slices of bread.

Delicious

Roneys Butchers
276 Sharrow Vale Road
Sheffield,
South Yorkshire
S11 8ZH
0114 266 0593

Mince Pies

2010-12-01T17:35:00.000Z

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snoooow.
With it being the first of December and with snow bringing most of the country to a halt, I thought it would nice to make the first batch of mince pies considering I had the day off.

Ingredients (makes 12)
8oz of Plain Flour
4oz of Butter
1oz of Caster sugar
2 Egg yolks
Couple of tbsp of water

1 tsp of Brandy
Jar of Mincemeat (or make your own)

Method
Add the flour and sugar to a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Make a well in the centre of the bowl and add the yolks and water.
Mix with a knife until a soft, slightly sticky dough forms, add more water if required.
Wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for about half n hour (this can be left overnight if needed)

Mix the brandy in with the mincement. (this part is optional but it gives a nice kick)
Roll out the pastry very thinly and use a large and a medium pastry cutter to create 12 bases (large) and 12 lids (medium).
Lay the bases in mini pie tray and add a small amount of mincemeat to each, do not add to much or it will seep out, a teaspoon should be sufficent.

Brush the edges with milk and place the lids on top.

Brush the pies with milk and make little holes in the top to release the steam.

Bake in a preheated oven (190 C) for about 15 minutes until golden brown
Cool on a wire rack.

Sprinkle with a little icing sugar and sit back and enjoy with your choice of beverage.

BBC Good Food Show, Birmingham

2010-11-30T19:35:00.000Z

Last Saturday I hopped on a train to Birmingham to every food and drink lovers heaven, The BBC Good Food Show at the NEC
For those of you that don't know the GFS is England's largest food festival, taking over several massive halls in the NEC twice a year for four days. Consisting of stalls featuring national food producers, little independent food producers, kitchenware sellers, distillers, breweries, wine merchants alongside several demonstrating areas featuring celebrity chefs and up and coming cookery talent.

Here are my personal highlights:

Food
Cornish Cheese Company
The new owners of the best cheese in the world, Cornish blue. This award was won at the GFS where the World Cheese Awards were held this year. not being a fan of blue cheese I went and had a taste anyway and was pleasantly surprised with what I tasted. not overly strong and no bad aftertaste, very moreish.

Small section of World Cheese Awards

A Particularly Pungent Stilton

Rossmore Oysters
Serving Oysters for £1.50 a go, very fresh and a lovely break from the cheese and meat stalls.

Blackface Meat company
Selling a variety of meat and wild game. Picked up some wood pigeon here to try for the first time, just need a good recipe now to show off their flavour.

Alcohol
Chase Distillery
Showing off their Potato Vodka which was very drinkable even for a non vodka drinker like myself, took a lot of restraint not to buy a bottle.

Compass Box Whisky
A pleasant 20 minutes was spent here with a mini tasting session from the exceptionally helpful staff. My particular highlight was the Spice Tree whisky which was stunning.

Andrew Peace wines
Lovely wine merchant with beautiful red wines, selling for a bargain 3 for £12. Mighty Murray Red is one to look out for.

I was also was lucky to meet John Torode from Masterchef who signed my show programme.

This was a last minute decision to go therefore I didn't catch any of the shows in the Super theatre where Gordon Ramsay and Masterchef were doing shows also all the masterclasses were sold out including CAMRA's tasting session. Maybe next year...

*I didn't get many photos because the place was rammed with it being a Saturday, I was also distracted by all the alcohol.

Aagrahs, Leeds

2010-11-14T22:21:00.002Z

Last week I was invited to birthday meal at Aagrahs in Leeds so I battled my way from Sheffield through the horrendous weather to join the celebrations and hopefully enjoy a decent curry.

Aagrahs is an Indian restaurant located near the West Yorkshire playhouse in Leeds. It is a small chain of restaurants with a vast collection of awards including a lifetime achievement award for the owner and executive chef.
On arrival we were invited to wait in a small seating area while our table was being prepared. Our drinks orders were taken and menus were handed out. The menu is quite extensive with all the usual suspects and a page of chef specialties. After a short wait we were shown to our table. We opted for the usual poppadoms and pickle tray, I was disappointed that lime pickle was not present on the tray but a spicy chili sauce soon made up for it. We decided to skip a starter which was a shame because I was looking forward to trying a spiced sea bass dish but then in hindsight it was probably a good idea that this course was skipped.

Lamb Pasanda

For my main I went for Lamb Pasanda - lamb cooked with garlic, ginger, yogurt, onions, chilli's, poppy seeds and select spices. I ordered pilau rice alongside. It was really delicious, a lovely blend of flavours with a slight chili burn that seemed to increase throughout the meal, cue the Mango Lassi. The rice was light, fluffy and perfectly cooked. The portions were quite large and I was very stuffed at the end.

Service was good, efficient but not intrusive.

I had to leave early so didn't catch the final bill but expect around £20 a head if you get starters etc.

Aagrahs
St. Peters Sq
Leeds,
West Yorkshire
LS9 8AH
0113 245 5667

Salsa Mexicana, Leeds

2010-11-14T21:48:00.002Z

It's a rare thing a good Mexican restaurant. Most that do exist, and there isn't that many compared to other cuisines, are not very good. so it was a pleasure to finally get round to visiting Salsa Mexicana in Chapel Allerton, Leeds.
The restaurant was fairly quiet when we arrived and we were pleasantly greeted and shown to a table. The restaurant itself was nicely decorated, stone floors and wooden tables with Mexican memorabilia around the small room.
We decided to opt for a sharing starter, a large plate of nachos with beef and chorizo. The tortilla chips were made in-house and came with jalapenos, salsa, guacamole, nacho cheese sauce and sour cream. The beef was quite juicy and tender. The menu states that a large portion serves 2 - 4 people......word of warning, if there are two of you and you haven't eaten for a week then by all means get the large otherwise I would advise against it. The portion was huge and took a lot of effort to eat it, the fact it was delicious did help things but it's not good if there is a main course on its way.

Nachos

Burrito bowl, Mole Poblano

I like to try new things every now and again and I was looking for a Mexican dish different from the usual fajitas, enchiladas etc so I opted for the Mole Poblano dish - chicken breast with a sauce of chili's, herbs and spices with a hint of Mexican chocolate, served with rice and grilled plantain.
It was really tasty, soft juicy chicken and the sauce was delicately balanced with a lovely bitter chocolate undertone.
The Other Half ordered a burrito bowl filled with vegetables and chicken and also a side of two spicy corn on the cobs.
Due to the monumental starter we couldn't finish the main course but the staff willingly boxed it up to take away and it made a tasty breakfast the next day.
Service was very good, we found out that they were understaffed so its credit to the two table staff that they managed to keep things running smoothly.

Total for two people: £30, really good value for the quality and quantity of food.

Go visit for authentic tasty Mexican food

Salsa Mexicana
116A Harrogate Road
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS7 4NY

The Mustard Pot, Leeds

2010-11-12T19:39:00.003Z

After the complete farce of a Sunday Lunch at the Roundhay Fox, we kept an eye out for somewhere else to satisfy the Sunday roast craving.
We had been to the Mustard Pot previously for a drink and were looking forward to visiting for food. The place was really busy when we arrived and were told there would be a 20 minute wait for food and would we like to wait in the bar. The addition of Jennings Cocker Hoop on the bar eased the wait time considerably.

While at the bar I had a look around to see if any of the problems that plagued the Roundhay Fox were apparent but everything seemed to be well organised, there was one menu on the wall with a few tasty sounding dishes and the normal day to day menus were stashed well away. Good start.

After 15 minutes we were shown to our seats and informed that the menu for the day was on the board. The board was difficult to see from our seats but this is a minor irritant. I decided to skip a starter and order the roast lamb for my main. The Other Half ordered a ham hock terrine with homemade piccalilli for starter and the lamb for her main.

Ham Hock Terrine

Lamb and Veg

Service was speedy and friendly with food brought out quickly with minimal wait. The starter, which I had a cheeky sample, was very good, salty ham contrasting the tang of the piccalilli. Shortly afterwards the mains arrived. A huge hunk of roast lamb, pink and oozing with juices, it was perfectly cooked and I could have quite happily eaten a plateful of that alone. It came served with homemade Yorkshire puddings, mixed veg and delicious creamed leeks.
Due to skipping a starter I decided to order a pudding, an interesting sounding strawberry, vanilla and pumpkin trifle with pumpkin seed praline. It was very tasty, slightly boozy but not overpowering and the added crunch of the praline was a nice touch. The Other Half ordered the cheese board which had enough cheese to feed 3 people so be warned if you order this for yourself.

Trifle

Total cost of meal for two: £40

A lovely pub in Chapel Allerton with beautiful Sunday lunches, well worth a visit.

Ale #4 Black Chocolate Stout - Brooklyn Brewery

2010-11-12T19:01:00.000Z

Appearance: Very very dark

Aroma: Rich chocolate

Flavour: Chocolate, Bittersweet, Malty.

Style: Imperial Stout

Why it's on here: After ending up at North bar in Leeds after an evenings drinking and on the hunt for a nightcap, a pleasant discussion with one of the bar staff lead me to this beer. The stout is incredibly rich with a deep chocolate flavour. It is brewed during the winter season - October to March and uses 6 varieties of chocolate and roasted malts. At 10% abv its definitely not a session beer and best saved for a nightcap to put the final nail in the hangover the next morning.

Ale #3 Roosters 5 Spice Pumpkin Ale

2010-10-31T18:41:00.000Z

Appearance: Golden ale

Aroma: Spicy with a slight hints of pepper

Flavour: Multi spiced - cloves, ginger, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg with pumpkin undertones

Why its on here: Its Pumpkin conditioned!!! Twitter on Friday was flooded with rumours about Roosters latest offering, a five spiced pumpkin ale served from a huge pumpkin. Pubs lucky enough to have delivery, (that I'm aware of) of this beery beast included Mr Foley's and North Bar in Leeds and the Tap on Sheffield Rail Station. I was lucky enough to be in range of Mr Foley's when I heard about their delivery so I duly paid them a visit. It was well worth it, not just for the novelty value but because it was an excellent beer. Not overly spicy and very smooth with the occasional sweet note. I could have willingly sat and drank it all day.

Check out their website of how it was done: Roosters Pumpkin ale

Bakewell slice

2010-10-26T19:01:00.001+01:00

Having received a subscription of BBC Good Food as a housewarming present, the cover recipe of this months issue has been taunting me since it arrived so I thought I would have a go making it.

Bakewell Slice
Pastry
225g of Plain Flour
110g of Butter
25g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
pinch of salt
few Tbsp of water.

5 Tbsp of Raspberry Jam
100g frozen raspberries
25g Flaked almonds

Sponge
200g Butter
200g Caster sugar
100g Ground almonds
100g SR Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Almond extract
4 Eggs, beaten

Method
Pastry
Mix flour, salt and sugar together, rub in butter until mixture resembles bread crumbs
Add the yolks and a couple of tbsp of water and bring the ingredients together with a knife until a soft but not sticky dough is formed. Add more water if needed.
Wrap tightly and rest for half n hour or so in the fridge.
Roll out and place in a lined traybake tin.
bake in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 8-10 mins until very slightly coloured.

Dot the jam over the pastry, the heat of the cooked pastry should soften and spread the jam, and scatter raspberries over randomly

Sponge
Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix well with an electric hand whisk
Spoon over the raspberries and smooth out.

Pastry before oven

Raspberries and jam

Just before the oven

Scatter over flaked almonds and bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 - 40 minutes.

Verdict: Sweet, soft almond sponge with sour raspberries, delicious with a cup of tea or reheat gently in an oven and serve with custard.

Test Space Kitchen 2, Leeds

2010-10-26T17:58:00.001+01:00

After the delightful experience of the first Test Space Kitchen, I was quite happy to find out the next one would have a fish and seaside theme.

Here's what the line up looked like this time:

Marvel at the giant knickerbocker glory!

Compete in the extreme jelly-eating competition!

Gasp in wonder and delight at our very own Sunshine Bakery’s award-winning cup cakes!

Laugh (heartily) at rib-tickling comedians!

Risk health and dignity in the game of Super Secret Shots!

Taste the delicious twisted fish & chip stylings of Fish&, created by Andrew Critchett and Fiona Rotheray!

Play the well-know Hit Things With Other Things game!

Throw caution to the wind with Russian Roulette Vol-au-Vents!

Listen to fantastic, fruity and downright filthy sea shanties!

Enjoy a special, seaside-themed YouTube DJ set by the wonderful Tim Ineaux

The location this time was in another room of the stunning Temple Works and was a bit more informal this time with a variety of tables and stools instead of the lines of tables of the first. This time around they seemed to be concentrating on the entertainment more than the food, which was the centre piece of the whole event last time.

The entertainment prior to the meal consisted of several, end of the pier, style stalls including a coconut shy, minus the coconuts, but with the more than satisfying range of smashable ornaments with Sunshine Bakery cupcakes for the crack shots (Me! woop!). Another stall consisted of 6 shots with a dice to decide which one you would receive, I was lucky and ended up with Butterscotch Schnapps and a black vodka. The final stall consisted of a roulette table with various canapes, again I appeared to be lucky, avoiding the spiked chilli canapes.

Random Shots

Canape Roulette

My prize cupcake

Kinckerbocker Glory

The food this time around consisted of fish and chips with a twist courtesy of Fish&, apparently there were different batters. The one I received was lemon flavoured but there was a chilli one floating around. It was very tasty, crispy batter with soft flesh. Afterwards Indie Ices came round with Mango Kulfi ice lolly's which were really lovely and then the huge Knickerbocker Glory was served which was very very sweet but tasty.

Entertainment after the food came in the form of amateur comedians, which were quite amusing. Especially when one of them decided to set an 'official' world record by rolling a Malteaser down a measuring tape into someones mouth. Guess who was the unwilling recipient of the Malteaser!! There was also one of the greatest responses to being heckled I've seen, dragging them up to play rock, paper, scissors. Genius.

I had to leave early due to a prior commitment but apparently later on there were dancers with candyfloss.

Another good evening courtesy of Test Space Kitchen, its a pity that this is the last one.